December 03, 2005
Trying Really Hard
I just submitted a hotel booking form for the Hotel San Francisco Plaza on which there was a field for reservated by, and the response page said, "Your reservation had been processed." Those are not even the funny translations I've seen recently. Sadly for you, dear reader, I did not jot those down at the time for later use in this entry. But there is a great one I remember from our last visit to Guadalajara...
Shawn reminded me earlier tonight of one of the most accurate inaccuracies we've heard in translation, on the Tequila Express at the beginning of the trip. They give a little speech as the train heads out of the station, welcoming you, telling about the beverage service (¡all you can drink Herradura!), outlining the schedule and so forth. At the end, our guide closed his comments with, "If you need anything at all, please don't bother to ask."
We laughed about that being quite honest for modern-day service industries, but that's not really fair to the Tequila Express folks (it is quite a quality experience). In some ways, it's not really appropriate to joke much about these goofs because at least the people are making an effort to cater to me in my native language, even though it's in their country. And they are trying really hard. The rest of the speech was absolutely flawless, and the fact that this mistake is a mixing of two different similar phrases in English and not simply an ommision of the word don't, it demonstrates a pretty decent command of the language.
But it does show how hard it is to master a foreign language and causes me to think about how many similar flubs I'm going to make in Mexico. I wonder if I'll end up being quoted on some Mexican's blog in an entry discussing the funny things that foreigners say in Spanish?
Posted by crispy at December 3, 2005 01:38 AM