Pathetic Mistranslations

Laurentius

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Lago Duria
Perhaps I'm being cynical, but why would they care if the games sell? It might even work in their favour – if a translation is so bad as to be funny, it might feature in some list that may go viral, bringing the game to the attention of a wider public. Free advertising.
It might happen in the country where the language is spoken. For example a bad translation into Italian won't go viral in Brazil. So in our case with Latin none will care about it.
 

Abbatiſſæ Scriptor

Senex

  • Civis Illustris

Serious problems can ariſe when products prove unuſable because their inſtructions are unintelligible in the target language, and buyers are led to believe that the inhabitants of the country of origin might be morons.
:confused:
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

To be fair, most people everywhere are morons. And instructions don't have to be translated to be unintelligible, although of course that helps.
 

Laurentius

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Lago Duria
Writes an article to defend classical education, puts a title in wrong Latin. :doh:
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
To be fair, I think a rare variant genitive facies existed (I read about it in some Roman author; I don't remember whether it was Gellius or Quintilian or yet someone else...), so they could still try to defend themselves... if they were aware of it, which I don't think they are, lol.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

I'm not sure if 'fair' is the right word. It's not as though it's likely that this was in anyone's mind.
 

Laurentius

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Lago Duria
Did they use it or they were mentioning it as a weird variant?
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
I'm not sure if 'fair' is the right word. It's not as though it's likely that this was in anyone's mind.
I meant fair towards myself, of course. Like, "to be fair towards myself, I should let you all know that I know about this variant form, which they probably don't." :p

(Seriously: you're right, of course. In spite of my unappropriate "to be fair", I said as much about them most probably not knowing about it.)
Did they use it or they were mentioning it as a weird variant?
They mentioned it as a variant and quoted a passage from another author where it was used (I don't remember which author, but an archaic one, I think).
 
 

cinefactus

Censor

  • Censor

  • Patronus

Location:
litore aureo
I'm not sure the best translation of "Facebook" would involve a genitive of "face" followed by "book" anyway.
Is that what the Latin was supposed to be. I was really struggling!
 

Laurentius

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Lago Duria
My brother told me about this writing from the beach asking about the meaning. I must say that I am not sure about the exact meaning but I might be missing something, does any of you understand the meaning of this?
 

Laurentius

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Lago Duria
Perhaps they omitted a longe or something, I wonder if it still makes sense like this.
 

Laurentius

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Lago Duria
Yes it took me a while to figure it out. It was a bit embarassing. :oops:
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Now perhaps I've seen similar constructions in the Vulgate.
Yes, here:

et datae sunt mulieri alae duae aquilae magnae ut volaret in desertum in locum suum, ubi alitur per tempus et tempora, et dimidium temporis a facie serpentis.

Revelation 12:14

I'll have a look in my dictionary to see if I can find occurences in classical Latin, but I don't think I've seen any so far.
 
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