1. One word is worth 71 million dollars
In 1980, 18-year-old Willie Ramirez was admitted to a Florida state hospital in a coma. His friends and family tried to describe his condition to the medical staff and the treating doctors, but they spoke only in Spanish. A bilingual staff member there did the translation and translated "intoxicado" to "intoxicated".
A professional translator will know that "intoxicado" is close to "poisoned" and does not carry the same connotations of drug or alcohol use as the word "intoxicated". Ramirez's family believed the boy suffered from food poisoning.
The boy was actually suffering from intracranial hemorrhage, but doctors treated the emergency as in the case of a deliberate overdose, which also resulted in the same symptoms he had shown. Due to delaying treatment, Ramirez was paralyzed in all limbs. He received an error compensation of $ 71 million.
2. Your lust for the future
When President Carter made a trip to Poland in 1977, the State Department hired a Russian interpreter who knew Polish but was not used to professional translation in that language.
Through the translator, Carter ended up saying sentences in Polish like "when I left America" (instead of "when I left America") and "your lust for the future" ( instead of "your aspirations for the future"). These errors are very interesting media in both countries.
3. We will bury you
Faced with the tension of the Cold War, Soviet head Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech in which he said a phrase translated from Russian into "We will bury you" (We will bury you). bury you guys).
The sentence was understood to be a dreadful threat to bury the United States with a nuclear strike and increased tensions between the US and Russia. However, the translated translation is a bit too rough. The meaning of the phrase in Russian leans towards "we will survive to see you buried" or "we will live longer than you". Still not quite as friendly, but not that intimidating either.
4. Do nothing
In 2009, HSBC had to launch a campaign to change the brand image worth $ 10 million to fix the damage caused when the bank's slogan "Assume Nothing" (see nothing) has has been misinterpreted as "Do Nothing" in many countries.
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