Latest / Ridiculous History / History's Famous Mistranslations, Part Two: Life on Mars, the Cold War, and FARTFULL

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History's Famous Mistranslations, Part Two: Life on Mars, the Cold War, and FARTFULL · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
0:31
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
0:33
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams.
0:35
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, the.
0:38
Speaker 1: Same in any language, a rose is a rose is
0:40
Speaker 1: a rose until it is translated incorrectly. You're Noel Brown,
0:46
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Boland. Do you remember the last time we
0:48
Speaker 1: talked about famous mistranslations?
0:51
Speaker 3: You know, I mentioned in the last episode that I
0:53
Speaker 3: did not remember, but now I totally remember because Jimmy
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Speaker 3: Carter really stuck it to the entire nation of Poland
1:00
Speaker 3: by accident. And may I also add that arose, even mistranslated,
1:04
Speaker 3: still smells as sweet.
1:06
Speaker 2: There we are.
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Speaker 1: Yes, we talked about our buddy Jimmy pulling for you
1:11
Speaker 1: for President Carter, as well as Pepsi's hilarious errors trying
1:19
Speaker 1: to market Pepsi cola in Asia.
1:23
Speaker 2: We had to do with ghosts, right, Yeah.
1:25
Speaker 1: It was like Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life life, yeah,
1:29
Speaker 1: or bite the wax tadpole, things like that. Check out
1:33
Speaker 1: our check out our first Famous Mistranslations episode. As we said,
1:39
Speaker 1: this is kind of a continuing series. We've got way
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Speaker 1: more funny, strange, downright ridiculous mistranslations. And I bet there's
1:48
Speaker 1: one in here. I know there is one in here
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Speaker 1: that you guys are gonna love. Let's dive in true
1:56
Speaker 1: true story. Life on Mars.
2:05
Speaker 2: Is their life on Mars? David Bowie seemed to think so.
2:08
Speaker 3: But for the purposes of this discussion, let us point
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Speaker 3: our mind canons backwards in time to eighteen seventy seven,
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Speaker 3: when an Italian you go.
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Speaker 2: When an Italian astronomer.
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Speaker 4: By the name of Giovanni Virginio Sia per Parelli Chiaparelli,
2:27
Speaker 4: there we go, who is the director of the Brera
2:29
Speaker 4: Observatory in Milan, Milano, he accidentally created a situation rife
2:37
Speaker 4: for conspiracy theorizing that would be right at home on
2:40
Speaker 4: our sister pod stuff.
2:41
Speaker 2: They don't want you to know.
2:43
Speaker 3: This particular conspiracy Schmorgsborg had to do with a very
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Speaker 3: famous mistranslation.
2:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is looking at the planet Mars. And so
2:55
Speaker 1: while he's looking at this, and he's a smart guy,
2:57
Speaker 1: as you said, he's working at this observatory, he says, well,
3:02
Speaker 1: holy spokes, there are light and dark areas on the
3:05
Speaker 1: surface and I'm going to call them sees and continents respectively.
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Speaker 1: And he said, oh, further, I see things that look
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Speaker 1: to be channels on the surface, and he called these
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Speaker 1: canali because you know, he speaks Italian.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, but unfortunately a lot of his peers in the
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Speaker 3: scientific community translated that to canals, like man made channels
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Speaker 3: that would require some sort of intelligent life on Mars
3:34
Speaker 3: in order to exists. Right, So canali, being Italian and
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Speaker 3: his translation meaning channel did not intend to describe intelligent creation.
3:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, But the issue is canali translated to canal
3:53
Speaker 1: in English is more problematic because canal definitely implies some
4:00
Speaker 1: sort of intelligent design, that's right. And then, of course,
4:03
Speaker 1: add to that for the average English speaking reader, it
4:07
Speaker 1: implies there's a lot of water on Mars because of
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Speaker 1: all the canals.
4:13
Speaker 3: That's right, And it absolutely set the scientific world of flame.
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Speaker 3: US astronomer Percevale Lowell mapped hundreds of these quote unquote
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Speaker 3: canals between eighteen ninety four and eighteen ninety five and
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Speaker 3: published three books on Mars' illustrated works over the next
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Speaker 3: two decades, showing what he thought were artificial structure is
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Speaker 3: built to carry water by some sort of intelligent race
4:42
Speaker 3: of like engineers, you know, like from what's that movie
4:46
Speaker 3: that wasn't so good but had the cool engineer guys, Prometheus.
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Speaker 2: That's the yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. The idea here is that someone had a slight
4:57
Speaker 1: translation error and then it launched all these other ideas.
5:02
Speaker 1: This concept of ancient, hyper intelligent alien engineers inspired so
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Speaker 1: many science fiction writers.
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Speaker 2: HG.
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Speaker 1: Wells in the War of the World describes an invasion
5:17
Speaker 1: of Earth by deadly Martians and also spawns an entire
5:22
Speaker 1: subgenre of science fiction that continues today. You can also
5:26
Speaker 1: see Edgar Reis Burroughs, who was a big deal back
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Speaker 1: in his time. He writes a novel called Princess of
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Speaker 1: Mars in nineteen eleven that also shows a dying, super
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Speaker 1: intelligent Martian civilization and uses get this, all of our
5:43
Speaker 1: buddy Giovanni's nomenclature for features on Mars.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it kind of stuck around, capturing the imaginations
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Speaker 3: of space enthusiasts the world over to the point where
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Speaker 3: NASA has actually had to spend a little bit of
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Speaker 3: their pr budget dispellings some of these rumors.
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Speaker 2: We've actually got a really great quote from NASA themselves.
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Speaker 1: The Network of criss crossing lines covering the surface of
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Speaker 1: Mars was only a product of the human tendency to
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Speaker 1: see patterns. Even wind patterns do not exist. When looking
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Speaker 1: at a faint group of dark smudges, the eye tends
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Speaker 1: to connect them with straight lines.
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Speaker 3: That came from our buddy at NASA named texts. Yes,
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Speaker 3: and the fancy word for that is apophenia. So shout
6:31
Speaker 3: out to our pal aj Bahamas Jacobs who taught us
6:35
Speaker 3: that one.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
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Speaker 3: We do tend to look for patterns and speech and rhythm,
6:42
Speaker 3: even you know, when we hear like windshiel wipers syncing
6:45
Speaker 3: up with the song on the radio.
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Speaker 2: It's just something that the human mind kind of strives.
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Speaker 1: For, or watching traffic or watching blinker lights exactly.
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Speaker 3: There are, of course visual ones and auditory ones, but
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Speaker 3: the fact is human beings are patterns seeking creature. And
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Speaker 3: of course, this was far from the first time that
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Speaker 3: a well meaning scientist had their words twisted into something
7:08
Speaker 3: of a hyperbolic headline.
7:09
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, history does rhyme. We also want to
7:14
Speaker 1: go to another one, a cold war Shenanigan. Now, not
7:19
Speaker 1: to be ageists, but some of our fellow ridiculous. Historians
7:23
Speaker 1: may recall that in nineteen fifty six, a guy named
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Speaker 1: Nikita Khrushchev, who was a pretty big deal in Russia
7:30
Speaker 1: at the time, he said something that was interpreted as
7:35
Speaker 1: him saying we will bury you, slamming his shoe on
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Speaker 1: the desk, we will bury you to Western shoe on
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Speaker 1: the desk to Western ambassadors at a reception at the
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Speaker 1: Polish embassy in Moscow.
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Speaker 3: Why did you take a shoe off. That's pretty aggressive.
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Speaker 3: I would have thought he was saying we will bury
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Speaker 3: you too. This speech and this misinterpretation had serious repercussions
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Speaker 3: outside of the event itself and made headlines around the world.
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Speaker 1: Oh and let me correct this. Khrushev was quite a
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Speaker 1: public figure. I just want to step back for a second.
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Speaker 1: He says we will bury you to Western ambassadors in
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. The alleged shoe banging incident is a
8:18
Speaker 1: separate thing that happened in New York City in nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty but still got it. He's making waves. And if
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Speaker 1: you want to understand why we consider this a mistranslation, Noel,
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Speaker 1: can we give everybody the English translation of the entirety
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Speaker 1: of his statement in nineteen fifty six.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it does kind of read like a malapropism,
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Speaker 3: you know, like where it's someone trying to approximate English slang, right,
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Speaker 3: but mixing it up a little bit. And then you also,
8:54
Speaker 3: of course have the extra game of telephone hiccup of
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Speaker 3: it being a translation, you know, and not even him
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Speaker 3: attempting to say it in English, but I can totally
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Speaker 3: picture him trying to say this in English.
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Speaker 2: Essentially, what he said was, whether you like it or not,
9:07
Speaker 2: history is on our side. We will dig you in.
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Speaker 3: Which I think he's meaning to say like we are
9:15
Speaker 3: digging in our heels, right, something along those lines, or
9:18
Speaker 3: we are going to lean in to the version of
9:21
Speaker 3: history that we see as being on our side.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's really attempting to convey his ideological belief that
9:28
Speaker 1: communism will outlast capitalism, which is what you have to
9:32
Speaker 1: say if you're the leader of the Soviet Union at
9:35
Speaker 1: this time. His entire phrase translates roughly to if you
9:40
Speaker 1: don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite
9:44
Speaker 1: us to come see you. Whether you like it or not,
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Speaker 1: history is on our side.
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Speaker 2: We will bury you.
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Speaker 1: Or as you said, Nol, we will dig you in
9:52
Speaker 1: This was a reference to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Karl
9:58
Speaker 1: Marx was a guy from back in the day who
10:00
Speaker 1: was super into communism.
10:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard of him.
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Speaker 3: The Communist Manifesto argued thusly, what the bourgeoisie therefore produces
10:09
Speaker 3: above all are its own grave diggers. Yeah, so, I mean,
10:14
Speaker 3: he's he is kind of saying we will vary you,
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Speaker 3: but it is referencing a specific work that might have
10:20
Speaker 3: been I mean, seems to have definitely been lost on
10:23
Speaker 3: a lot of people listening.
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Speaker 1: What we're saying is he was not directly threatening the
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Speaker 1: United States in a way that many Americans in the
10:38
Speaker 1: media and in public life sort of assumed. It's not
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Speaker 1: a call mean phrase. It's definitely agro to your earlier point,
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Speaker 1: but it's not trying to immediately attack America and Khrushchev himself.
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Speaker 1: In years following he will clarify his statement there on
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Speaker 1: more than one a case, but he doesn't do it
11:01
Speaker 1: until years have passed. In nineteen fifty nine, so like
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Speaker 1: three years later, he's at the National Press Club in
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Speaker 1: Washington and he tries to make not quite a male kulpa,
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Speaker 1: but let's call it a clarification.
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Speaker 3: What does he say, Well, he says, the words we
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Speaker 3: will bury capitalism should not be taken literally, as is
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Speaker 3: done by ordinary grave diggers. Carry a spade and dig
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Speaker 3: graves and bury the dead. What are you doing, Khrushev.
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Speaker 3: What I had in mind was the outlook for the
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Speaker 3: development of human society. Socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so we're we kind of get the context there.
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Speaker 1: He also, yeah, I mean still agro, Still agro, for sure.
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Speaker 1: He later expands on this in a speech in Yugoslavia
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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, and this time he says, I
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Speaker 1: once said we will bury you, and I got into
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Speaker 1: trouble with it. Of course, we will not bury you
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Speaker 1: with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.
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Speaker 1: Still not great, still not great, but not a direct threat.
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Speaker 2: No, not a direct threat. It's true.
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Speaker 3: The damage was, though done, and even today a lot
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Speaker 3: of Americans will not have bothered to read the retraction,
12:16
Speaker 3: as is usually the case when something is misprinted in
12:19
Speaker 3: a newspaper, a publication.
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Speaker 2: Of note, or in a speech that goes wide like this,
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Speaker 2: taking it.
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Speaker 1: Too far, which reminds us, of course, of another infamous
12:30
Speaker 1: translation error. A lot of this, a lot of the
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Speaker 1: funniest or most ridiculous mistranslations occur not in the world
12:40
Speaker 1: of state craft, but in the world of private business.
12:43
Speaker 1: The American Dairy Association launched a campaign back in nineteen
12:48
Speaker 1: ninety three called got Milk. It's just it's not an
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Speaker 1: advertisement for a specific brand for like Ben and Jerry's
12:55
Speaker 1: or Bluebell or whatever, just the idea of milk.
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Speaker 2: Just the idea of milk.
13:00
Speaker 1: Do you have it?
13:00
Speaker 2: Or are you a loser? And people of a.
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Speaker 3: Certain age would have seen this plastered everywhere on billboards,
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Speaker 3: there were TV commercials, and honestly, even people that didn't
13:10
Speaker 3: live through it, it really did have a lot of
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Speaker 3: staying power because it's a pretty damn memorable little catchphrase.
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Speaker 3: But translating this in as is the case often with
13:20
Speaker 3: things like slogans that need to be very pithy and
13:24
Speaker 3: rely on cultural context shout out a million percent, sometimes
13:30
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of tricksiness when it comes to
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Speaker 3: translating these in a way that has the same oomph
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Speaker 3: as intended, but also like means the right thing.
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Speaker 1: Right the same context, you know. And I'm of the
13:44
Speaker 1: mind that most people living in the United States. Even
13:48
Speaker 1: if they say they don't speak Spanish, they know a
13:51
Speaker 1: little bit more Spanish than they might assume. You know
13:54
Speaker 1: what I mean, Oh, for sure, I know that leche
13:56
Speaker 1: is milk.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I do know that.
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Speaker 1: And we know that the literal Spanish translation for got
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Speaker 1: milk translates to something like are you lactating?
14:07
Speaker 3: This is the kind of question you might get if
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Speaker 3: you got a phone call from the Japanese governments if
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Speaker 3: you're a young a woman. I'm not joking. We've talked
14:15
Speaker 3: about this recently on stuff that I want you to know.
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Speaker 3: There's a huge issue with birth rate declines in Japan
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Speaker 3: and other Asian countries as well, to the point where
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Speaker 3: I believe representatives from the government are calling up women
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Speaker 3: personally and asking them if they are with child or
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Speaker 3: planning on becoming.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I think that's a Chinese one in
14:36
Speaker 1: the government of Japan, also to your point, pitched the
14:40
Speaker 1: idea of just removing uteruses from every female after the
14:45
Speaker 1: age of thirty.
14:46
Speaker 2: Which is totally whack on so many levels.
14:48
Speaker 3: But also like, if you're a woman that wasn't planning
14:51
Speaker 3: on having kids anyway, isn't that just kind of a
14:54
Speaker 3: free hysterectomy. It's very strange. I think we mandatory for histor.
15:00
Speaker 3: It's not a good guys.
15:00
Speaker 2: I'm just saying.
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Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem very functional, is what I'm getting.
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Speaker 1: And it also doesn't seem to help the case that
15:06
Speaker 1: they're trying to argue for, which is increasing the birth rate.
15:09
Speaker 1: But that is ridiculous history. I think we unanimously can
15:14
Speaker 1: agree we don't want that to pass. Just human beings
15:18
Speaker 1: don't want that to happen. Absolutely not so Luckily for
15:22
Speaker 1: our pals at the ADA, the American Dairy Association, they
15:26
Speaker 1: figured out their got milk snafu pretty quickly. They immediately
15:31
Speaker 1: changed the messaging and thank goodness, learned a little bit
15:35
Speaker 1: more about Latin culture and the Spanish language. However, another
15:41
Speaker 1: group didn't do their homework and didn't pay attention. I'm
15:45
Speaker 1: not too familiar with these folks, but Noel Parker Pen.
15:49
Speaker 3: I don't know Parker penn On, assuming they make pens,
15:53
Speaker 3: and I am glad to report that you are correct.
15:57
Speaker 1: The Parker Pen Company was founded in Wisconsin in the
16:02
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and they make a bunch of pens. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Maybe because of the NAFU or maybe they had other
16:08
Speaker 3: pr debacles.
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Speaker 2: I don't really know them as a household name. Maybe
16:12
Speaker 2: they're still around.
16:13
Speaker 3: But when Parker Penn's decided to move their business into Mexico,
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Speaker 3: they had a slogan that in English read it won't
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Speaker 3: leak in your pocket and embarrass you, which, unfortunately, in
16:26
Speaker 3: a remarkable translation fail In Spanish, the way they translated.
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Speaker 2: It read as it won't leak in your pocket and
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Speaker 2: make you pregnant.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, because in bras are a false cognate in Spanish,
16:42
Speaker 1: which means to be pregnant better. It's also they're different
16:49
Speaker 1: versions of how this slogan went wrong. But because in Spanish,
16:53
Speaker 1: in the Spaniel the word embarrassment is a homonym for pregnancy,
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Speaker 1: it sounds like like you said, it won't leak in
17:02
Speaker 1: your pocket and make your pregnant or to avoid pregnancy,
17:06
Speaker 1: use a Parker pen. Just very weird vibe from your
17:10
Speaker 1: pen company. Pretty bold claim from running pen prophylactic.
17:16
Speaker 2: Here.
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Speaker 1: Now, we're keeping this kind of a short one today
17:20
Speaker 1: because we have more on the way. But here's the
17:22
Speaker 1: one I was teasing that I know you will love
17:25
Speaker 1: dudes and do debts. Ikea is yes, yes, known for
17:33
Speaker 1: all sorts of things easily assembled furniture, surprisingly, kick ass
17:39
Speaker 1: cafeteria like the splarf or the flipped Yes yeah, and
17:43
Speaker 1: also the fun names which are positively hogan DAWs to
17:47
Speaker 1: most Americans. Hogandas, by the way, is a made up word. Yeah,
17:52
Speaker 1: that's just a marketing thing from an American company. So
17:57
Speaker 1: instead of using product codes to label the stuff they sell,
18:01
Speaker 1: Ikea uses Swedish names that are meant to emphasize or
18:06
Speaker 1: highlight a key feature of the product. So the names
18:10
Speaker 1: for everybody doesn't speak Swedish. They're just cool names, you know, like, oh,
18:15
Speaker 1: look at that two o's next to each other.
18:17
Speaker 2: What a world? Yeah, starfandorth Yes. Yeah.
18:20
Speaker 1: They came out with a children's bench toy kind of thing.
18:24
Speaker 3: Vehicles for working with their hammers, their tiny hammers and
18:28
Speaker 3: things like that for kids.
18:29
Speaker 2: It's it's a cute thing. Ikea is great with kids.
18:32
Speaker 1: The name of this noel was fart for faar t
18:37
Speaker 1: f u l l fart full.
18:40
Speaker 4: Yeah.
18:40
Speaker 3: And it's funny because you know the German word farfignugen
18:43
Speaker 3: for example, which is a funny one just means a
18:45
Speaker 3: love of traveling to drive is fart, like I fart.
18:53
Speaker 2: Whatever.
18:53
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, my German is rusty, but it does mean
18:57
Speaker 3: to drive or to travel farvig being like the love
19:00
Speaker 3: of travel. It's really funny too. There was another great
19:03
Speaker 3: mistranslation that works. It's not a mistranslation honestly though. It
19:06
Speaker 3: really isn't like. It just means something that is inherent
19:10
Speaker 3: in the love of traveling. The movie Speed in I
19:15
Speaker 3: Believe in Europe or in Germany Sweden perhaps was translated
19:20
Speaker 3: to just fart.
19:23
Speaker 2: Nice to remember there was a bomb on the bus. Yeah.
19:26
Speaker 3: If you see the posters for these iterations of branding,
19:30
Speaker 3: it just says fart.
19:31
Speaker 2: That's great man.
19:33
Speaker 1: We also know look the work bench, the children's work bench,
19:37
Speaker 1: fartful was not a bad idea. It's a pretty deep
19:41
Speaker 1: little design.
19:42
Speaker 2: Was it made of farts?
19:44
Speaker 1: It was made of you know, love particle boards. Probably
19:49
Speaker 1: someone farted while they were making it.
19:51
Speaker 2: It's entirely possible.
19:52
Speaker 1: So this hits the United Kingdom first. That's the first
19:57
Speaker 1: English language or Anglosphere nation. This product is unveiled in
20:02
Speaker 1: and Ikia gets so embarrassed because everybody's laughing about it.
20:07
Speaker 2: Fartfull.
20:07
Speaker 1: Probably just the awkward mistranslation probably helped sell this product,
20:14
Speaker 1: but Ikia said, you know, we don't want to.
20:18
Speaker 2: We don't want to.
20:19
Speaker 1: Look like we're a company that says children are constantly farting,
20:23
Speaker 1: so they pulled it off the market.
20:26
Speaker 2: But everybody's not untrue though.
20:28
Speaker 1: No, the average human farts seventeen to twenty three times
20:32
Speaker 1: per twenty four hours. Check out our episode for stuff
20:36
Speaker 1: they want, you know on fecal transplants, the future of poop,
20:39
Speaker 1: please do.
20:40
Speaker 3: It's not grossed at all. But that then would be
20:42
Speaker 3: like kind of involuntary farts. If kids they just love
20:46
Speaker 3: farting so much. I bet you could double that number.
20:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet you could.
20:50
Speaker 1: Let's get our numbers up.
20:58
Speaker 2: You could.
20:59
Speaker 1: At this point ridiculous. Historians reasonably assume that a lot
21:04
Speaker 1: of this hilarity is due to good old fashioned human error,
21:08
Speaker 1: and therefore assume maybe technology will save the day. That
21:12
Speaker 1: may be the case in the future, but for now
21:15
Speaker 1: we know computers have caused translation problems all on their own,
21:20
Speaker 1: especially in the case of Facebook. Oh this is a
21:23
Speaker 1: sad one.
21:24
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, there was sadly, as their often is
21:28
Speaker 2: in this part of the world.
21:29
Speaker 3: A very serious and deadly earthquake in Indonesia in twenty eighteen,
21:33
Speaker 3: and a lot of people took to social media to,
21:36
Speaker 3: of course, you know, mark themselves safe from this disaster.
21:40
Speaker 3: A lot of folks, however, were a little shocked when
21:43
Speaker 3: Facebook added the little kind of emote feature of balloons
21:49
Speaker 3: and confetti to some of these posts.
21:54
Speaker 2: Oof. Yikes.
21:56
Speaker 1: It's kind of like when people were still figuring out
21:59
Speaker 1: how to respect bond with emoji. Two different statements, and
22:03
Speaker 1: you would see someone who said, you know, a post
22:06
Speaker 1: about losing a family member or a loved one, and
22:09
Speaker 1: then at the bottom where you could see the compilation
22:12
Speaker 1: of emoji reactions, you would see a laugh emoji. And
22:16
Speaker 1: surely they didn't mean to laugh at it, right, it's tough.
22:20
Speaker 2: Surely not. No, it might have been a slip of
22:22
Speaker 2: the fat finger.
22:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Facebook's uh, spokes folks, said spokes folks, I like
22:27
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, they said, look, our company regrets this
22:33
Speaker 1: celebration of disaster appeared in this unfortunate context, right.
22:37
Speaker 3: Because the Indonesian word selamat, which would translate to survive
22:42
Speaker 3: or be safe, was mistranslated interpreted as being congratulations.
22:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the algorithm all hailed. The algorithm misinterpreted the
22:54
Speaker 1: comments and automated balloons in confetti. One is saying, hey,
23:02
Speaker 1: my family died in this earthquake, or hey we've lost
23:05
Speaker 1: the house and everything, or hey I'm I'm doing my
23:09
Speaker 1: best to be alive, and then all the comments would
23:12
Speaker 1: have balloons.
23:12
Speaker 2: Would get that yay, your house is bad anyway, it's
23:19
Speaker 2: a little rough, you know.
23:20
Speaker 3: It reminds me of you know, there are a lot
23:22
Speaker 3: of these types of mistranslations that are based around computer
23:25
Speaker 3: stuff these days, especially with auto correct.
23:29
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it's.
23:30
Speaker 3: Gotten a lot more machine learning e you know, so
23:34
Speaker 3: it starts to It can be a little better. It
23:36
Speaker 3: can predict breaks in your sentences and commas and things
23:39
Speaker 3: like that. But sometimes there are some pretty funny mistranslations
23:43
Speaker 3: and potentially not funny. I saw a quite funny story
23:48
Speaker 3: delivered by Tom York of Radiohead the other day where
23:50
Speaker 3: he was reading a text sent to somebody as part
23:53
Speaker 3: of some series where he was reading different letters celebrities
23:55
Speaker 3: are reading different letters and messages from you know, English City,
24:00
Speaker 3: And this was a story where a guy was talking
24:02
Speaker 3: about how he was helping a sixteen year old daughter
24:04
Speaker 3: with their homework and got a text.
24:06
Speaker 2: From mom saying what do you want from life?
24:11
Speaker 3: Question mark, at which point he really he and the
24:14
Speaker 3: child puzzled over this, and we're working on Oh my gosh,
24:17
Speaker 3: Mom is really in an intense mood. We should respond
24:19
Speaker 3: and then we better think this through. We don't want
24:21
Speaker 3: to disappoint her. But before they had a chance to
24:23
Speaker 3: send it back, she responded, ah, autocorrect, I meant what
24:26
Speaker 3: do you want from leedal.
24:28
Speaker 1: Right, I'm passingly familiar with that on my closest brush
24:34
Speaker 1: with this kind of awkwardness and is a dumb story
24:37
Speaker 1: was I was texting my mom one day and I
24:42
Speaker 1: said what I sent her was, or what I meant
24:46
Speaker 1: this set was I'm thinking of growing a mustache, and autocorrect,
24:51
Speaker 1: in its infinite wisdom, changed that to I'm thinking of
24:55
Speaker 1: growing a moist ache, at which point my mom said,
24:59
Speaker 1: I should a doctor. You probably should if you got
25:02
Speaker 1: a moist steak mustache, the moist steak come on, Oh.
25:07
Speaker 2: Man, God only knows.
25:08
Speaker 5: Well.
25:08
Speaker 3: I'm glad you guys made it past that potentially awkward
25:11
Speaker 3: familial moment.
25:12
Speaker 1: It's a moist steak and history's big translation cringe moments
25:18
Speaker 1: aren't just from the past. They're not just from the
25:21
Speaker 1: Cold War or Jimmy Carter trying to sleep with all
25:24
Speaker 1: of Poland. As recently as twenty sixteen, we saw this
25:28
Speaker 1: go wrong in state craft when Canadian politician and leader
25:32
Speaker 1: Justin Trudeau was at the White House. Is speaking French,
25:36
Speaker 1: and if you watched him as an American, you would
25:39
Speaker 1: see him on ABCTV praising things like radio stations in
25:45
Speaker 1: Motorola or Nazi innings.
25:48
Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, isn't he also the guy that got
25:50
Speaker 3: in trouble for wearing black face that like a Halloween
25:53
Speaker 3: party and I think, oh man, this guy can't can't
25:56
Speaker 3: keep from stepping in it.
25:58
Speaker 2: But this was not his fault and I did not
26:00
Speaker 2: intend to say Nazi innings. What even is that? Did
26:02
Speaker 2: Nazis even play baseball?
26:04
Speaker 1: No, they weren't that cool, according to the According to
26:08
Speaker 1: ABC later in the aftermath, the mistakes that were made
26:12
Speaker 1: in translation came from a computer program that was automatically
26:17
Speaker 1: translating Trudeau's words from French to English, and because it
26:22
Speaker 1: was a machine and not a person behind the translation,
26:26
Speaker 1: it didn't get the context of what Trudeau was saying,
26:30
Speaker 1: and it couldn't read his accent correctly.
26:32
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing, man.
26:33
Speaker 3: This was back into what twenty sixteen, and with all
26:36
Speaker 3: the advancements in machine learning and all of that stuff.
26:40
Speaker 2: It's still pretty bad.
26:41
Speaker 3: If you ever watch auto translated like British comedy on YouTube,
26:46
Speaker 3: the accents absolutely seemed to perplex these algorithms. Because there's
26:51
Speaker 3: some of these like Monty Python or whatever where they
26:54
Speaker 3: have really heavy accents or use some serious British slang.
26:57
Speaker 3: It is unintelligible when you read the subtitles that are
27:01
Speaker 3: auto generated.
27:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, and it could happen with pretty much
27:06
Speaker 1: any dialect of a language, right If I love this
27:10
Speaker 1: example of watching a streaming service with a show from
27:14
Speaker 1: maybe rural Australia or something, and you can understand as
27:19
Speaker 1: a human English speaker what these folks are saying, but
27:23
Speaker 1: the subtitles are downright confusing because they're missing things due
27:28
Speaker 1: to pronunciation of words, and the human mind can sort
27:31
Speaker 1: of connect the dots on its own.
27:33
Speaker 3: Well, And you got to wonder too, are they training
27:36
Speaker 3: these algorithms with English or are there ways to pivot
27:41
Speaker 3: to an algorithm that is trained with the actual language
27:44
Speaker 3: that's being translated, that's being you know, transcribed, because you
27:48
Speaker 3: would really need to the algorithm would need to be
27:50
Speaker 3: familiar with the way these things.
27:52
Speaker 2: Are spoken and not just on paper.
27:55
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's moist steaks, all moistakes.
28:00
Speaker 5: We want.
28:01
Speaker 1: We wanted to add the second part of our famous
28:04
Speaker 1: mistranslation series with one of the trickiest things in the
28:10
Speaker 1: world of marketing, naming a car. Do you guys ever
28:14
Speaker 1: think about how weird car names are?
28:18
Speaker 3: Well, it's like they're running out of them, you know,
28:20
Speaker 3: it just seems like they're just getting more and more absurd.
28:23
Speaker 1: Some are pretty clearly conveying the brand or the emotive
28:27
Speaker 1: quality they wish to signal, you know, the Spider, the Viper,
28:31
Speaker 1: the Mustang, but others are not quite words.
28:35
Speaker 2: What the hell is a tourag to eg? How do
28:38
Speaker 2: you even say it?
28:42
Speaker 1: The Yeah, the tourag from Volkswagen or Wolfswagen. Yes, it's
28:51
Speaker 1: tough because you know, cars are part of a global
28:56
Speaker 1: industry now, and the car market itself overall stretches around
29:01
Speaker 1: the world. But even the best car names of one
29:03
Speaker 1: language can be confusing or downright ridiculous in another. This
29:08
Speaker 1: is where we have to shout out our good pals
29:11
Speaker 1: at Ford. Yeah, they get a double ridiculous award for
29:16
Speaker 1: this one. Ben Wishoe coined, which we should definitely make
29:18
Speaker 1: a thing. First, they've got the slogan.
29:22
Speaker 3: Again, slogans are tricky because it's like translating Bible versus.
29:27
Speaker 3: There is so much license that can be taken that
29:30
Speaker 3: can really change the vibe of something that's meant to
29:34
Speaker 3: be very pithy and to the point.
29:36
Speaker 1: Right.
29:36
Speaker 3: That's why people whose jobs it is to translate historical
29:40
Speaker 3: texts or works of literature, the nuance is everything, and
29:45
Speaker 3: individuals like the King James, for example, can kind of
29:48
Speaker 3: steer the narrative of how something will be interpreted for
29:52
Speaker 3: generations based on the way they choose to translate something.
29:55
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Also, Toreg for Volkswagen is a misspelling
30:01
Speaker 1: slash homage to an ethnic group from northern Africa called
30:07
Speaker 1: the Tareg people.
30:09
Speaker 2: Okay, but that's cool, I guess, But why would you.
30:12
Speaker 1: Why would you say with your buide to Volkswagen.
30:15
Speaker 2: You know, again, I think that I think they're just
30:16
Speaker 2: running out of words. But every car has a high
30:20
Speaker 2: quality body.
30:22
Speaker 3: Which is one of the most boring slogans I could
30:25
Speaker 3: possibly imagine.
30:26
Speaker 2: I think they've moved on from that one. But also
30:29
Speaker 2: the word body.
30:30
Speaker 3: Guys, I'm pretty sure we're going to run into some
30:32
Speaker 3: problems with body.
30:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out that over in Belgium would be
30:38
Speaker 1: Ford consumers ran into a slogan that said every car
30:43
Speaker 1: has a high quality corpse.
30:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:46
Speaker 3: I mean that, And it makes sense because I can say, man,
30:48
Speaker 3: you've sure got a hot body, or what what are
30:51
Speaker 3: you doing with a body in your trunk? Or I'm
30:54
Speaker 3: taking my car to the body shop. Like it is
30:57
Speaker 3: all about the context and the nuance. And we as
31:00
Speaker 3: Americans do have single words that often can mean nine
31:04
Speaker 3: different things depending on where you emphasize it or what.
31:07
Speaker 2: We're just rounding.
31:07
Speaker 3: I'm sure that's true in other languages too, but I
31:10
Speaker 3: do think that we may be the worst at it.
31:14
Speaker 1: I think we're neck and neck with several other languages.
31:18
Speaker 1: It's just the thing is, you're not wrong. We could
31:22
Speaker 1: just argue no one's doing it particularly well at this
31:25
Speaker 1: point in twenty twenty four. I think of the Pinto,
31:28
Speaker 1: the Ford Pinto. It's not the most impressive car.
31:31
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? What about the Nino and
31:34
Speaker 2: the Santa Maria. Yeah, what happened to it was great?
31:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Ford wanted to sell this thing they saw
31:43
Speaker 1: as an economical car, not top of the line. It's
31:47
Speaker 1: not meant to be for the one percenters. It's meant
31:50
Speaker 1: to be for the working class, the folks who have
31:53
Speaker 1: a job, they need dependable transportation. The Pinto is not
31:58
Speaker 1: too showy. It seems like a good fit.
32:00
Speaker 2: The bottle.
32:01
Speaker 3: Well, it's a stand in for kind of a cheap car.
32:03
Speaker 3: People talk about the Pento now and it sort of
32:05
Speaker 3: becomes this like catch all for like a shitty car.
32:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:09
Speaker 1: And the boffins at Ford are looking at international markets
32:13
Speaker 1: and they say, you know who's gonna love the Pinto
32:16
Speaker 1: the nation of Brazil.
32:19
Speaker 2: And so they deploy this.
32:21
Speaker 1: They're surprised because they're not selling this very well, what's
32:25
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, that's when they learned. They finally did
32:28
Speaker 1: the research they should have done, and they said, oh, Brazil,
32:34
Speaker 1: you know, the dominant language is Portuguese. Pinto is local
32:38
Speaker 1: slaying for a guy with a small.
32:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:43
Speaker 3: I mean it's typically a guy with a small penis
32:45
Speaker 3: would buy like a Mustang or a Lamborghini or a yeah,
32:48
Speaker 3: a hummer. Indeed, it's the whole compensation thing, right, A
32:51
Speaker 3: Pento would probably be the last choice of a man
32:54
Speaker 3: with a small penis. And they were not speaking to
32:55
Speaker 3: their audience at all and or nobody wanted to drive
32:58
Speaker 3: around a vehicle and ploy that they had a small penis.
33:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:01
Speaker 1: This is way before the success of the hip hop
33:04
Speaker 1: phenomenon Little Dicky, right, which was owning that kind of stuff.
33:09
Speaker 1: So forward to their credit.
33:11
Speaker 2: As soon as they find this out, they should have
33:13
Speaker 2: been a pivot. Yeah.
33:15
Speaker 1: They they they pivoted their Pintos and they replaced all
33:19
Speaker 1: the insignia and advertising. They renamed it the Corsello, which
33:24
Speaker 1: means horse like.
33:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're doing a little compensating themselves.
33:33
Speaker 3: Oh yes, a big strong like horse, you know, like,
33:36
Speaker 3: oh man, all you people that were offended by the
33:38
Speaker 3: Penso now we're speaking to you guys just to jump
33:41
Speaker 3: in here, because the Pinto is a joke amongst my
33:45
Speaker 3: family very much.
33:45
Speaker 2: Being from Detroit, weh, what's a joke?
33:47
Speaker 4: Car?
33:47
Speaker 2: Kind of? I mean, because it was a bit of
33:49
Speaker 2: a lemon, wasn't it. Well, do you guys know what
33:51
Speaker 2: the flow with the Pinto was? That was what I
33:53
Speaker 2: was wondering if.
33:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, the gas tank in the rear, so if you're
33:57
Speaker 5: ended a Pinto, there was a chance you would explode.
34:00
Speaker 2: That's no good. Yeah, And it happened a couple of
34:02
Speaker 2: times too.
34:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, very badly designed.
34:05
Speaker 2: It reminds me, uh in some ways.
34:08
Speaker 1: You know, these cars acquire personality as part of their brand,
34:12
Speaker 1: and it reminds me of how the Miata is just
34:15
Speaker 1: not popular outside of a.
34:19
Speaker 2: Very particular group of people.
34:21
Speaker 1: And that's not translation error, that's that's just the vibe
34:25
Speaker 1: of the Miata.
34:27
Speaker 5: My buddy Ian, his h Mustang, was in the shop
34:30
Speaker 5: recently and so he was driving his mom's Miada around
34:33
Speaker 5: and I asked about of us, sowere's your opinion.
34:34
Speaker 2: He's like, I don't know, man, everyone hates these cars.
34:36
Speaker 2: This thing's fun.
34:37
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, you're in the minority then, man, well
34:40
Speaker 5: they are.
34:40
Speaker 3: I mean, if anyone hasn't seen the Miyata, they are dainty,
34:42
Speaker 3: little petite convertible.
34:44
Speaker 1: They're special little boys, you know what I mean.
34:47
Speaker 2: They're special boys.
34:48
Speaker 1: And this is our this is our episode on famous mistranslations.
34:54
Speaker 1: We have more on the way. We can't wait to
34:56
Speaker 1: hear yours. H be careful. There's a lot of scuttle,
35:00
Speaker 1: but some of this is alleged. Sometimes the marketing gurus
35:05
Speaker 1: tell the story with a little bit of on it,
35:08
Speaker 1: but visit us over ridiculous historians on Facebook and let
35:12
Speaker 1: us know some of your favorite experiences. Shout out to
35:15
Speaker 1: our super producer, mister Max Williams.
35:18
Speaker 3: Indeed, and shout out to Alex Williams who composed our
35:22
Speaker 3: theme Boop.
35:24
Speaker 1: East, Jeffco, Chris Vassiotis here in Spirits, the one and
35:28
Speaker 1: only Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister. You may have heard
35:33
Speaker 1: our recent news from an earlier episode this week. I
35:37
Speaker 1: don't even want to.
35:38
Speaker 2: Do the jokes I was gonna do at this point.
35:41
Speaker 2: Now it's far too filthy. Yeah, far too filthy. Oh Man.
35:46
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs the Puzzler, as well
35:50
Speaker 3: as Chris Frosciotis and EEFs Jeff Cos here in spirit
35:53
Speaker 3: Big big.
35:54
Speaker 1: Thanks to Gave Lucier. If you like this show, check
35:56
Speaker 1: out Ridiculous Crime featuring the Rude Dudes themselves, Zarin Elizabeth
36:01
Speaker 1: and super producer Dave and Noel. You know, beyond any language.
36:08
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Love in any language, straight from
36:11
Speaker 2: the heart Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
36:20
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