Before I go exposing other people's bad translations, I feel it only fair to air my own dirty laundry. Recently, while translating a birth record from Spanish to English, I had a hard time reading the occupation of the mother. It seemed to say that she was a cabaret performer, so I put that in the draft translation that I showed to the client. Good thing it was only a draft. The word was a Uruguayan way to say "housewife". (In my defense, it was handwritten.) The client was good-humored. She corrected me without malice, after she had shared the bad translation with all her kin. They had a good laugh, too, thinking of their mother singing for tips in some dusky lounge instead of hanging out the laundry. The final draft had Mom back home.
Fortunately, I have a very protective memory, and I can't recall other really bad work. However, I was once reviewer for someone else's work from English into Spanish and saved them some embarrassment. Instead of "consejo", meaning "council", they had typed "conejo", meaning "rabbit". We came very close to publishing guidance that all questions be passed to the Advisory Rabbit.
Now back to more of other people's bad translations. See the English language page of the Bowwin Translation Company of Shenzhen, China. To be fair, most of the site is well translated, or at least intelligible. But I think they are exposing a policy of nepotism when they say, "It carries out operations by establishing consanguineous cooperation among translators, press correctors and project managers." "Consanguineous"? Two points for creativity, but "close" would have worked better. On their "Recruit" page, they say they are looking for: "Rich experience or expert in followings preferred: ... 4. Translation or interpretation of rare languages, such as Germany, French, Spanish, etc."
Can you top these?
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