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

Summary

Ridiculous History: Episode Summary Title: History's Famous Mistranslations, Part Two: Life on Mars, the Cold War, and FARTFULL
Host(s): Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown
Release Date: December 5, 2024

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1. Introduction

In the second installment of their series on famous mistranslations, Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown delve deeper into some of history's most intriguing and humorous translation blunders. This episode explores how seemingly minor errors in translation have led to significant misconceptions, cultural mishaps, and lasting impacts on society.

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2. Life on Mars: The "Canali" Mistranslation

Key Discussion: The hosts recount the story of Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who in 1877 described surface features on Mars as "canali." While "canali" in Italian simply means "channels," English translators rendered it as "canals," implying artificial structures built by intelligent beings.

Notable Insights:

• Schiaparelli never intended to suggest intelligent life on Mars; the mistranslation sparked widespread conspiracy theories and inspired science fiction narratives.
• U.S. astronomer Percival Lowell further propagated the canal theory, mapping supposed canals and suggesting they were evidence of an advanced Martian civilization.

Notable Quote: Noel Brown explains the phenomenon, saying, "The network of crisscrossing lines covering the surface of Mars was only a product of the human tendency to see patterns, even when patterns do not exist" (09:59).

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3. Cold War Era: Khrushchev's "We Will Bury You"

Key Discussion: The episode examines Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's infamous statement, "We will bury you," delivered in 1956. Initially interpreted as a direct threat to the West, the phrase was later clarified by Khrushchev to mean the inevitable triumph of socialism over capitalism.

Notable Insights:

• The mistranslation fueled Cold War tensions and contributed to Western fears of Soviet aggression.
• Khrushchev's subsequent clarifications did little to alleviate the initial impact of the mistranslation, showcasing how language barriers can escalate geopolitical tensions.

Notable Quote: Ben Bowlin contextualizes Khrushchev's intent, stating, "He is really attempting to convey his ideological belief that communism will outlast capitalism" (13:56).

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4. Mistranslations in Advertising

a. "Got Milk?" Campaign

Key Discussion: The American Dairy Association's iconic "Got Milk?" slogan faced translation challenges. While highly effective in English, translating the phrase required careful consideration to maintain its impact and cultural relevance.

Notable Insights:

• Translating slogans requires more than literal word-for-word translation; cultural nuances and idiomatic expressions play a crucial role in preserving the message's effectiveness.

Notable Quote: Ben Bowlin humorously notes, "The literal Spanish translation for 'Got milk' translates to something like, 'Are you lactating?'" (21:35).

b. Parker Pens' Slogan

Key Discussion: When Parker Pens expanded into Mexico, their slogan "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you" disastrously translated to "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

Notable Insights:

• The mistranslation arose from the Spanish word "embarazar," which can mean both "to embarrass" and "to make pregnant."
• This error highlighted the importance of understanding local language nuances to avoid unintended and potentially offensive meanings.

Notable Quote: Noel Brown remarks, "It sounded like you said it won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant. Or to avoid pregnancy, use a Parker pen. Just very weird vibe from your pen company" (24:16).

c. IKEA's "FARTFULL"

Key Discussion: IKEA introduced a children's workbench named "Fartful," which caused amusement and embarrassment in English-speaking markets. While intended to convey the love of traveling, "Fartful" inadvertently alludes to flatulence.

Notable Insights:

• Product naming in global markets can lead to unintended humor or offense if not carefully vetted across different languages and cultures.
• IKEA ultimately pulled the product from English-speaking markets to avoid associating their brand with children farting.

Notable Quote: Ben Bowlin jokes, "The name of this Noel was Fartful. F A R T F U L L. Fartful...it means to drive or to travel. It's really funny too" (26:19).

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5. Modern Translation Errors

a. Facebook's Indonesian Earthquake Response

Key Discussion: During the 2018 earthquake in Indonesia, Facebook's automated translation feature mistakenly added celebratory emojis like balloons and confetti to serious posts about the disaster.

Notable Insights:

• The error stemmed from the Indonesian word "selamat," intended to convey survival or safety, being mistranslated as "congratulations."
• This incident underscored the limitations of machine translations in understanding context, especially during sensitive events.

Notable Quote: Ben Bowlin summarizes the mishap, stating, "Someone is saying, 'Hey, my family died in this earthquake,' and then all the comments would have balloons and confetti. Yay, your house was bad" (32:39).

b. Autocorrect Fiascoes

Key Discussion: The hosts share personal anecdotes about autocorrect failures, such as "moist ache" instead of "mustache," highlighting how technology can inadvertently create awkward or embarrassing messages.

Notable Insights:

• Autocorrect errors can lead to misunderstandings and unintended humor, reflecting the ongoing challenges in refining machine learning algorithms for language processing.

Notable Quote: Noel Brown shares a humorous story, saying, "She responded, 'Ah, autocorrect. I meant, what do you want from Lidl?'” (35:42).

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6. Car Naming Mishaps: The Ford Pinto Case

Key Discussion: Ford's attempt to market the Pinto in Brazil encountered unexpected challenges when "Pinto" in Portuguese slang refers to a man with a small penis, making the car name unattractive to the target audience.

Notable Insights:

• The cultural and linguistic connotations of product names can significantly impact market reception.
• Ford had to rebrand the Pinto to "Corello" to better align with local cultural perceptions and avoid the negative slang association.

Notable Quote: Ben Bowlin explains the issue, "Pinto is local slang for a guy with a small penis...nobody wanted to drive around a vehicle implying that they had a small penis" (43:40).

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7. Conclusion

Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown wrap up the episode by emphasizing the importance of thorough research and cultural understanding in translation, especially in global communications and marketing. They encourage listeners to share their own experiences with mistranslations and highlight the ongoing challenges and humorous outcomes that arise from language barriers.

Notable Quote: Noel Brown concludes, "These are human error and therefore assume maybe technology will save the day...for now we know computers have caused translation problems all on their own" (32:12).

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Join the Conversation: Share your favorite mistranslation stories with Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and stay tuned for more episodes exploring the bizarre and hilarious aspects of history.

Transcript

[Ben Bowlin]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in. And let's hear if our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

[Noel Brown]

Hello.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, the same in any language. A rose is a rose is a rose until it is translated incorrectly. Noel. You're Noel Brown. I'm Bimbo. And do you remember the last time we talked about famous mistranslations?

[Noel Brown]

You know, I mentioned in the last episode that I did not remember, but now I totally remember because Jimmy Carter really stuck it to the entire nation of Poland by accident. And may I also add that arose even mistranslation translated still smells sweet.

[Ben Bowlin]

There we are. Yes, we talked about our buddy Jimmy pulling for you, former President Carter as well as Pepsi's hilarious errors trying to market Pepsi Cola in Asia where had.

[Noel Brown]

To do with ghosts, right?

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, it was like Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life. Yeah. Or bite the wax tadpole. Things like that. Check out our our first famous Mistranslations episode. As we said, this is kind of a continuing series. We've got way more funny, strange, downright ridiculous mistranslations. And I bet there's one in here. I know there is one in here that you guys are going to love. Let's dive in. True story. Life on Mars.

[Noel Brown]

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[Noel Brown]

Is there life on Mars? David Bowie seemed to think so, but for the purposes of this discussion, let us point Our mind cannons backwards in time to 1877 when an Italian. Here you go. When an Italian astronomer by the name of Giovanni Vergino Chiropractic Schiaparelli. There we go. Who is the director of the Brera observatory in Milan Milano, he accidentally created a situation rife for conspiracy theorizing that would be right at home on our sister pod stuff they don't want you to know. This particular conspiracy smorgasbord had to do with a very famous mistranslation.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. He is looking at the planet Mars. And so while he's looking at this, and he's a smart guy, as you said, he's working at this observatory, he says, well, holy smokes, there are light and dark areas on the surface, and I'm going to call them seas and continents respectively. And he said, oh, further, I see things that look to be channels on the surface. And he called these canali because, you know, he speaks Italian.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, but unfortunately a lot of his peers in the scientific community translated that to canals, like man made channels that would require some sort of intelligent life on Mars in order to exist. Right. So Canelli, being Italian and his translation meaning channel did not intend to describe intelligent creation.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, yeah. But the issue is canal. Translated to canal in English is more problematic because canal definitely implies some sort of intelligent design.

[Noel Brown]

That's right.

[Ben Bowlin]

And then of course, add to that for the average English speaking reader, it implies there's a lot of water on Mars because of all the canals.

[Noel Brown]

That's right. And it absolutely set the scientific world aflame. US astronomer Percival Lowell mapped hundreds of these quote unquote canals between 1894 and 1895 and published three books on Mars illustrated works over the next two decades showing what he thought were artificial structures built to carry water by some sort of intelligent race of like engineers. You know, like from. What's that movie that wasn't so good, but had the cool engineer guys.

[Ben Bowlin]

Prometheus.

[Noel Brown]

Prometheus, that's the one. Yeah.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. The idea here is that someone had a slight translation error and then it launched all these other ideas. This concept of ancient hyper intelligent alien engineers inspired so many science fiction writers. H.G. wells in the War of the Worlds describes an invasion of Earth by deadly Martians and also spawns an entire subgenre of science fiction that continues today. You can also see Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was a big deal back in his time. He writes a novel called Princess of Mars in 1911 that also shows a dying super intelligent Martian civilization and uses, get this, all of our buddy Giovanni's nomenclature for features on Mars.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, and it kind of stuck around capturing the imaginations of space enthusiasts the world over, to the point where NASA has actually had to spend a little bit of their PR budget dispelling some of these rumors. We've actually got a really great quote from NASA themselves.

[Ben Bowlin]

The network of crisscrossing lines covering the surface of Mars was only a product of the human tendency to see patterns, even when patterns do not exist. When looking at a faint group of dark smudges, the eye tends to connect them with straight lines.

[Noel Brown]

That came from our buddy at NASA named Tex.

[Ben Bowlin]

And yes, and the fancy word for that is apophenia. So shout out to our pal AJ Bahamas Jacobs, who. Who taught us that one.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. We do tend to look for patterns in speech and rhythm. Even, you know, when we hear like windsh wipers syncing up with the song on the radio. It is something that the human mind kind of strives for.

[Ben Bowlin]

Or watching traffic or watching blinker lights.

[Noel Brown]

Exactly. There are of course, visual ones and auditory ones. But the fact is human beings are pattern seeking creatures. And of course, this was far from the first time that a well meaning scientist had their words twisted into something of a hyperbolic headline.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh yes, yes, history does rhyme. We also want to go to another one. A Cold War shenanigan. Now, not to be ageist, but some of our fellow ridiculous historians may recall that in 1956, a guy named Nikita Khrushchev, who was a pretty big deal in Russia at the time, he said something that was interpreted as him saying, we will bury you. Slamming his shoe on the desk. We will bury you to Western.

[Noel Brown]

His shoe on the desk.

[Ben Bowlin]

To Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish Embassy in Moscow.

[Noel Brown]

Why did he take his shoe off? That's pretty aggressive. I would have thought he was saying, we will bury you too. This speech and this misinterpretation had serious repercussions outside of the event itself and made headlines around the world.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, and let me correct this. Khrushchev was quite a public figure. I just want to step back for a second. He says, we will bury you to Western Ambassadors in 1956. The alleged shoe banging incident is a separate thing that happened in New York City in 1960, but still got it. He's making waves. And if you want to understand why we consider this a mistranslation. Noel, can we give everybody the English translation of the entirety of his statement in 1956?

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, it does kind of read like a malapropism where it's someone trying to approximate English slang. Right. But mixing it up a little bit. And then you also, of course, have the extra game of telephone hiccup of it being a translation and not even him attempting to say it in English. But I could totally picture him trying to say this in English. Essentially what he said was, whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in. Which I think he's meaning to say, like we are digging in our heels. Right. Something along those lines. Or we are going to lean in to the version of history that we see as being on our side.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. He's really attempting to convey his ideological belief that communism will outlast capitalism, which is what you have to say if you're the leader of the Soviet Union at this time. His entire phrase translates roughly to if you don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite us to come see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you. Or as you said, Noel, we will dig you in. This was a reference to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx was a guy from back in the day who was super into communism.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Heard of him. The Communist Manifesto argued thusly, what the bourgeoisie therefore produces above all are its own grave diggers.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

So I mean, he is kind of saying, we will bury you. But it is referencing a specific work that might have. I mean, seems to have definitely been.

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[Ben Bowlin]

What we're saying is he was not directly threatening the United States in a way that many Americans in the media and in public life sort of assumed. It's not a calming phrase. It's definitely aggro to your earlier point, but it's not trying to immediately attack America. Khrushchev himself, in years following, he will clarify his statement there on more than one occasion, but he doesn't do it until years have passed. In 1959. So, like, three years later, he's at the National Press Club in Washington, and he tries to make not quite a mea culpa, but let's call it a clarification. What does he say?

[Noel Brown]

Well, he says the words we will bury capitalism should not be taken literally, as is done by ordinary grave diggers who carry a spade and dig graves and bury the dead. What are you doing, Khrushchev? What I had in mind was the outlook for the development of human society. Socialism will inevitably succeed. Capitalists.

[Ben Bowlin]

Okay, so we kind of get the context there. He also ish.

[Noel Brown]

Ish.

[Ben Bowlin]

I mean, still agro. Still agro, for sure. He later expands on this in a speech in Yugoslavia in 1963, and this time he says, I once said, we will bury you. And I got into trouble with it. Of course. We will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

[Noel Brown]

Still not great.

[Ben Bowlin]

Still not great. But not a direct threat.

[Noel Brown]

No, not a direct threat. It's true. The damage was, though, done. And even today, a lot of Americans will not have bothered to read the retraction, as is usually the case when something is misprinted in a newspaper or a publication of note or in a.

[Ben Bowlin]

Speech that goes wide like this, taking it too far. Which reminds us, of course, of another infamous transition translation error. A lot of the funniest or most ridiculous mistranslations occur not in the world of statecraft, but in the world of private business. The American Dairy association launched a campaign back in 1993 called Got Milk? It's not an advertisement for a specific brand, for like, Ben and Jerry's or Blue Bell or whatever.

[Noel Brown]

Just. Just the idea of milk.

[Ben Bowlin]

Just the idea of milk. Do you have it or are you a loser?

[Noel Brown]

And people of a certain age would have seen this plastered everywhere on billboards. There were TV commercials, and honestly, even people that didn't live through it, it really did have a lot of staying power because it's a pretty damn memorable little catchphrase. But translating this, as is the case, often with things like slogans that need to be very pithy and rely on cultural context. Shout out, Pepsi a million percent. Sometimes there's a little bit of tricksiness when it comes to translating these in a way that has the same oomph as intended, but also, like, means the right thing, right?

[Ben Bowlin]

The same context. You know, and I'm of the mind that most people living in the United States, even if they say they don't speak Spanish, they know a little bit more Spanish than they might assume. You know what I mean?

[Noel Brown]

Oh, for sure. I know that leche is milk. Yes, I do know that.

[Ben Bowlin]

And we know that the literal Spanish translation for got milk translates to something like, are you lactating?

[Noel Brown]

This is the kind of question you might get if you got a phone call from the Japanese government if you're a young woman. I'm not joking. We've talked about this recently on stuff they don't want you to know. There's a huge issue with birth rate declines in Japan and other Asian countries as well, to the point where I believe representatives from the government are calling up women personally and asking them if they are with child or planning on becoming.

[Ben Bowlin]

So, yeah, yeah, I think that's a Chinese one. And the government of Japan, also, to your point, pitched the idea of just removing uteruses from every female after the.

[Noel Brown]

Age of 30, which is totally whack on so many levels. But also, like, if you're a woman that wasn't planning on having kids anyway, isn't that just kind of a free hysterectomy?

[Ben Bowlin]

It's very strange.

[Noel Brown]

I think we a mandatory for kiss. I mean, it's not good, guys. I'm just saying it just doesn't seem very functional is what I'm getting.

[Ben Bowlin]

And it also doesn't seem to help the case that they're trying to argue for, which is increasing the birth rate. But that is ridiculous history. I think we unanimously can agree we don't want that to pass. Just human beings don't want that to happen.

[Noel Brown]

Absolutely not.

[Ben Bowlin]

So luckily for our pals at the ada, the American Dairy association, they figured out their Got milk snafu pretty quickly. They immediately changed the messaging and thank goodness, learned a little bit more about Latin culture and the Spanish language. However, another group didn't do their homework and didn't pay attention. I'm not too familiar with these folks, but Noel Parker Penn.

[Noel Brown]

I don't know Parker Penn. I'm assuming they make pens.

[Ben Bowlin]

I am glad to report that you are correct. The Parker Company was founded in Wisconsin in the late 1800s and they make a bunch of pens.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, just maybe because of the snafu. Or maybe they had other PR debacles. I don't really know them as a household name. Maybe they're still around. But when Parker Pens decided to move their business into Mexico, they had a slogan that in English read, it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you, which unfortunately, in a remarkable translation, fail in Spanish. The way they translate it, it read as it won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. Because in Beresar, a false cognate in Spanish, which means to be pregnant. There are different versions of how this slogan went wrong, but because in Spanish, in Espanol, the word embarrassment is a homonym for pregnancy. It sounded like you said it won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant. Or to avoid pregnancy, use a Parker pen. Just very weird vibe from your pen company.

[Noel Brown]

Pretty bold claim too, right?

[Ben Bowlin]

Pen prophylactic. Now, we're keeping this kind of a short one today because we have more on the way, but here's the one I was teasing that I know you will love. Dudes and dudettes. IKEA is ikea. Yes, yes. Known for all sorts of things. Easily assembled furniture, surprisingly kick ass cafeteria.

[Noel Brown]

Like the Splarf or the Flerpt.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yes. Yeah. And also the fun names, which are positively Haagen Dazs to most Americans. Haagen Dazs, by the way, is a made up word. Yeah, yeah. That's just a marketing thing from an American company. So. So instead of using product codes to label the stuff they sell, IKEA uses Swedish names that are meant to emphasize or highlight a key feature of the product. So the names for everybody who doesn't speak Swedish, they're just cool names, you know, like, oh, look at that, two O's next to each other. What a world.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Scharfendorf.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yes. Yeah. They came out with a children's bench toy kind of thing, vehicle for working.

[Noel Brown]

With their hammers, their tiny hammers and things like that for kids.

[Ben Bowlin]

And it's, it's a cute thing. IKEA is great with kids. The name of this Noel was Fartful. F A R T F U L L. Fartful.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And it's funny because, you know, the German word farfig nugen, for example, which is a funny one, just means a love of traveling. To drive is fart. Like ich fart, whatever. I'm sorry, my German is rusty. But it does mean to drive or to travel. Farfetch nguen again, being like the love of travel. It's really funny too. There was another great mistranslation that works. It's not a mistranslation, honestly though, it really isn't. It just means something that is inherent in the love of traveling. The movie Speed in, I believe in Europe or in Germany, Sweden, perhaps, was translated to just fart.

[Ben Bowlin]

Nice.

[Noel Brown]

Even if you'll remember, there's a bomb on the bus. Yeah. If you see the posters for these iterations of the branding, it just says fart.

[Ben Bowlin]

That's great, man. We also know, look, the workbench, the children's workbench. Fartful was not a bad idea. It's a pretty neat little design.

[Noel Brown]

Was it made of farts, Ben?

[Ben Bowlin]

It was made of love particle board. Probably someone farted while they were making it.

[Noel Brown]

It's entirely possible.

[Ben Bowlin]

So this hits the United Kingdom first. That's the first English language or Anglosphere nation this product is unveiled in. And IKEA gets so embarrassed because everybody's laughing about it. Fartful, probably just the awkward mistranslation probably helped sell this product. But IKEA said, you know, we don't want to. We don't want to look like we're a company that says children are constantly farting. So they pulled it off the market. But everybody.

[Noel Brown]

It's not untrue, though.

[Ben Bowlin]

No. The average human farts 17 to 23 times per 24 hours. Check out our episode for stuff they want, you know, on fecal transplants, the future of poop.

[Noel Brown]

Please do. It's not gross at all. But that, Ben, would be like kind of involuntary farts. If kids, they just love farting so much. I bet you could double that number.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, I bet you you could. Let's get our numbers up.

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[Max Williams]

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[Chelsea Handler]

Oh hi, this is Chelsea Handler from the Dear Chelsea podcast. This episode is brought to you by opill, the first over the counter daily birth control pill available in the us. I love shedding light on what's important for women's healthcare and one thing that makes healthcare easier is making birth control more convenient to access. Well, let me introduce opill. Opill is a daily birth control pill that is FDA approved, full prescription strength and estrogen free. Plus there's no prescription needed. Finally, the days of needing a prescription for birth control are over. A sentence I very much enjoy saying. This is our moment to take control of our health and reproductive journeys. Because OPill is birth control in your control. OPill is available online and at most major retailers. Use code OP I L L O T C O P I L L O T C for 25% off your first month of [e-mail].

[Ben Bowlin]

You could at this point ridiculous. Historians reasonably assume that a lot of this hilarity is due to good old fashioned human error and therefore assume maybe technology will save the day. That may be the case in the future, but for now we know computers have caused translation problems all on their own, especially in the case of Facebook. Oh, this is a sad oh for sure.

[Noel Brown]

There was sadly, as there often is in this part of the world, a very serious and deadly earthquake in Indonesia in 2018. And a lot of people took to social media to, of course, you know, mark themselves safe from this disaster. A lot of folks, however, were a little shocked when Facebook added the little kind of emote feature of balloons and confetti to some of these posts.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oof.

[Noel Brown]

Yikes.

[Ben Bowlin]

It's kind of like when people are still figuring out how to respond with emoji to different statements. And you would see someone who said, you know, a post about losing a family member or a loved one, and then at the bottom where you could see the compilation of emoji reactions, you would see a laugh emoji. And surely they didn't mean to laugh at it. Right? It's tough.

[Noel Brown]

Surely not. No. It might have been a slip of the fat finger.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. And Facebook, I like that. Yeah. They said, look, our company regrets this celebration of disaster appeared in this unfortunate context.

[Noel Brown]

Right. Because the Indonesian word selamat, which would translate to survive or be safe, was mistranslated, interpreted as being congratulations. Congratulations.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. So the algorithm, all hail. The algorithm misinterpreted the comments and automated balloons and confetti. So someone is saying, hey, my family died in this earthquake, or hey, we've lost the house and everything, or hey, I'm doing my best to be alive. And then all the comments would have balloons and confetti. Yay, your house was bad. Anyway, it's a little rough.

[Noel Brown]

You know, it reminds me of, you know, there are a lot of these types of mistranslations that are based around computer stuff these days, especially with autocorrect.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, yes.

[Noel Brown]

And it's gotten a lot more machine learning.

[Ben Bowlin]

Y.

[Noel Brown]

You know, so it starts to. It can be a little better. It can predict breaks in your sentences and commas and things like that. But sometimes there are some pretty funny mistranslations and potentially not funny. I saw a quite funny story delivered by Tom York of Radiohead the other day where he was reading a text sent to somebody as part of some series where he was reading different letters, celebrities were reading different letters and messages from English citizens. And this was a story where a guy was talking about how he was helping his 16 year old daughter with their homework and got a text from mom saying, what do you want from life, question mark? At which point he and the child puzzled over and we're working on, oh my gosh, mom is really in an intense mood. We should respond and we better think this through. We don't want to disappoint her. But before they had a chance to send it back. She responded, ah, autocorrect. I meant, what do you want from Lidl?

[Ben Bowlin]

Right? I'm passingly familiar with that one. My closest brush with this kind of awkwardness, and this is a dumb story, was I was texting my mom one day and I said. Said what I sent her was. Or what I meant to say was, I'm thinking of growing a mustache. And autocorrect, in its infinite wisdom, change that to, I'm thinking of growing a moist ache. At which point my mom said, I should see a doctor.

[Noel Brown]

You probably should. Got a moisture to be moist.

[Ben Bowlin]

That's mustache to moist ache. Come on.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, man. God only knows. Well, I'm glad you guys made it past that potentially awkward familial moment.

[Unknown]

Moment.

[Ben Bowlin]

It's a moistache and history's big translation cringe moments aren't just from the past. They're not just from the Cold War or Jimmy Carter trying to sleep with all of Poland. As recently as 2016, we saw this go wrong in statecraft. When Canadian politician and leader Justin Trudeau was at the White House, he was speaking in French. And if you watched him as an American, you would see him on ABC TV praising things like radio stations in Motorola or Nazi innings.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, no. Yeah. Isn't he also the guy that got in trouble for wearing blackface at, like, a Halloween party or something?

[Ben Bowlin]

I think so.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, man. This guy can't. Can't keep from stepping in it. But this was not his fault. I did not intend to say Nazi innings. What even is that? Did Nazis even play baseball?

[Ben Bowlin]

No, they weren't that cool. According to abc, later in the aftermath, the mistakes that were made in translation came from a computer program that was automatically translating Trudeau's words from French to English. And because it was a machine and not a person behind the translation, it didn't get the context of what Trudeau was saying, and it couldn't read his accent correctly.

[Noel Brown]

Well, that's the thing, man. This was back in, what, 2016, and with all the advancements in machine learning and all of that stuff, it's still pretty bad. If you ever watch auto translated, like British comedy on YouTube, the accents absolutely seem to perplex these algorithms because there's some of these, like Monty Python or whatever, where they have really heavy accents or use some serious British slang. It is unintelligible when you read the subtitles that are auto generated.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it could happen with pretty much any. Any dialect of a language. Right. If I love this example of watching a streaming service with a Show from maybe rural Australia or something. And you can understand as a human English speaker what these folks are saying. But the subtitles are downright confusing because they're missing things due to pronunciation of words, and the human mind can sort of connect the dots on its own.

[Noel Brown]

Well, and you gotta wonder, too, are they training these algorithms with English, or are there ways to pivot to an algorithm that is trained with the actual language that's being translated or that's being, you know, transcribed? Because you would really need to. The algorithm would need to be familiar with the way these things are spoken and not just on paper.

[Ben Bowlin]

Otherwise, it's moist steaks. Oh, moist steaks. All down. We wanted to add the second part of our famous Mistranslation series with one of the trickiest things in the world of marketing, naming a car. Do you guys ever think about how weird car names are?

[Noel Brown]

Well, it's like they're running out of them. You know, it just seems like they're just getting more and more absurd.

[Ben Bowlin]

Some are pretty clearly conveying the brand or the emotive quality they wish to signal. You know, the Spider, the Viper, the Mustang. But others are not quite words.

[Noel Brown]

What the hell is a Tuareg?

[Ben Bowlin]

Touareg.

[Noel Brown]

How do you even say it?

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, the Touareg from Volkswagen. Or Volkswagen. Yeah, Volkswagen. It's tough because cars are part of a global industry now, and the car market itself overall stretches around the world. But even the best car names in one language can be confusing or downright ridiculous in another. This is where we have to shout out our good pals at Ford.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, they get a double ridiculous award for this one, Ben, which you coined, which we should definitely make a thing first. They've got the slogan again. Slogans are tricky because it's like translating Bible verses. There is so much license that can be taken that can really change the vibe of something that's meant to be very pithy and to the point. Right. That's why people whose jobs it is to translate historical texts or works of literature, the nuance is everything. And individuals like the King James, for example, can kind of steer the narrative of how something will be interpreted for generations based on the way they choose to translate something.

[Ben Bowlin]

100%. Also, Taurag for Volkswagen is a misspelling homage to an ethnic group from Northern Africa called the Tarag people.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, but that's cool, I guess. But why would you.

[Ben Bowlin]

Why would you spell it right when you're buying a Volkswagen?

[Noel Brown]

You know, again, I think they think they're just running out of words. But every car has a high quality body, which is one of the most boring slogans I could possibly imagine. I think they've moved on from that one. But also the word body. Guys, I'm pretty sure we're gonna run into some problems with body.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. It turns out that over in Belg for would be Ford. Consumers ran into a slogan that said, every car has a high quality corpse.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And it makes sense because I can say, man, you've sure got a hot body. Or what are you doing with a body in your trunk? Or I'm taking my car to the body shop. Like, it is all about the context and the nuance. And we as Americans do have single words that often can mean nine different things, depending on where you emphasize it or what word you're surrounding. I'm sure that's true in other languages, but I do think that we may be the worst at it.

[Ben Bowlin]

I think we're neck and neck with several other languages.

[Noel Brown]

Okay.

[Ben Bowlin]

It's just the thing is, you're not wrong. We could just argue no one's doing it particularly well at this point in 2024. Think of the Pinto, the Ford Pinto. It's not the most impressive car. You know what I mean?

[Noel Brown]

What about the Nino and the Santa Maria?

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. What happened to the Pinto? I'm sorry. It was great. Yeah. Ford wanted to sell this thing they saw as an economical car, not top of the line. It's not meant to be for the 1 percenters. It's meant to be for the working class, the folks who have a job. They need dependable transportation. The Pinto is not too showy. It seems like a good fit.

[Noel Brown]

The boss, well, it's a stand in for kind of a cheap car. People talk about the Pinto now and it sort of becomes this like, catch all for, like a car.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. And the boffins at Ford are looking at international markets and they say, you know who's going to love the Pinto? The nation of Brazil. And so they deploy this. They're surprised because they're not selling this very well.

[Noel Brown]

What's going on?

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. That's when they learned. They finally did the research they should have done and they said, oh, Brazil, you know, the dominant language is Portuguese. Pinto is local slang for a guy with a small.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I mean, and typically a guy with a small penis would buy like a Mustang or a Lamborghini or a Hummer or something. Yeah, a Hummer, indeed. It's the whole compensation thing. Right. A Pinto would probably be the last choice of a man with a small penis. So they were not speaking to their audience at all. And. Or nobody wanted to drive around a vehicle implying that they had a small penis.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. This is way before the success of the hip hop phenomenon Little Dickie. Right. Which was owning that kind of stuff. So Ford, to their credit, as soon as they find this out, they should.

[Noel Brown]

Have did a Pinto pivot.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, they, they, they. They pivoted their Pentos and they replaced all the insignia and advertising. They renamed it the Corello, which means horse. Like.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, that they're doing a little compensating themselves for it here a little bit. Oh, yes. Big, strong, like horse, you know, like. Oh, man. All you people offended by the pinto, now we're speaking to you guys just to jump in here, because the Pinto is a joke amongst my family very much being from Detroit. Well, it's a joke car, kind of. I mean, because it was a bit of a lemon, wasn't it? Well, do you guys know what the flaw with the Pinto was? That was what I was wondering. Did the gas tank have a gas tank? Yeah, the gas tank in the rear. So if you rear ended a Pinto, there was a chance you would explode. That's no good.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, and it happened a couple times, too.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Very badly designed car.

[Ben Bowlin]

It reminds me in some ways, you know, these cars acquire personality as part of their brand. And it reminds me of how the Miata is just not popular outside of a very particular group of people. And that's not. Translation error. That's. That's just the vibe of the Miata.

[Noel Brown]

My buddy Ian, his Mustang was in the shop recently, and so he was driving his mom's Miata around, and I asked him about him. So what's your opinion? He's like, I don't know, man. Everyone hates these cards. This thing's fun. I'm like, yeah, you're in the minority then, man.

[Ben Bowlin]

Well, they are.

[Noel Brown]

I mean, if anyone hasn't seen a Miata, they are dainty little petite convertible.

[Ben Bowlin]

They're special little boys. You know what I mean? They're special boys. And this is our episode on Famous Mistranslations. We have more on the way. We can't wait to hear yours. Be careful. There's a lot of scuttlebutt. Some of this is a. Sometimes the marketing gurus tell the story with a little bit of zhuzh on it. But. But. Visit us over at Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and let us know some of your favorite experiences. Shout out to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

[Noel Brown]

Indeed. And shout out to Alex Williams, who.

[Ben Bowlin]

Composed our theme Yves Jeffcoat, Christopher Osceotis here in spirit. The one and only Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Quister. You may have heard our recent news from an earlier episode this week. I don't even want to do the jokes I was going to do at this point.

[Noel Brown]

No, it's far too filthy.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, far too filthy.

[Noel Brown]

Oh man. Huge thanks to AJ Bahamas Jacobs the Puzzler as well as Chris Frost and Eve Jeff Cos here in spirit.

[Ben Bowlin]

Big, big thanks to Gabe Luzier. If you like this show, check out Ridiculous Crime featuring the Rude dudes. Them themselves, Zarin, Elizabeth and super producer Dave and Noel. You know, beyond any language. Thank you very much.

[Noel Brown]

Love in any language. Straight from the heart, Ben. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

[Max Williams]

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[Max Williams]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Chelsea Handler]

Oh hi, this is Chelsea Handler from the Dear Chelsea Podcast. This episode is brought to you by opill, the first over the counter dance daily birth control pill available in the us. I love shedding light on what's important for women's health care and one thing that makes health care easier is making birth control more convenient to access. Well, let me introduce opill. Opill is a daily birth control pill that is FDA approved, full prescription strength and estrogen free. Plus there's no prescription needed. Finally, the days of needing a prescription for birth control are over. A sentence I very much enjoy saying. This is our moment to take control of our health and reproductive journeys. Because Opill is birth control in your control. Opill is available online and at most major retailers. Use code OP I L L O T C O P I L L O T C for 25 off your first month of [e-mail].