People Are Sharing Hilarious Literal Translations, And Here Are 30 Of The Best Ones
Learning a new language is challenging. However, it's just as rewarding. I mean, having the ability to interact with someone who grew up in a a completely different environment? Juk tai nuostabu. And the lessons aren't just a painstaking grind. They're full of fun things as well. One of them is literal translations, the "word-for-word" translations that tend to drift away from the sense of the original word on sentence. One of the members of the Facebook group Monolinguals are the worst has urged others to share the funniest literal translations they know, and, believe me, they delivered. Scroll down to check out these linguistic gems and upvote your favorites!
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Interestingly, the United States is largely monolingual. In fact, only about 15-20 percent of Americans call themselves bilingual, compared to 56 percent of Europeans surveyed in 2006 by the European Commission.
According to Arabic professor Mahmoud Al-Batal, the inability to speak a foreign language makes it difficult for Americans to compete globally on a linguistic and cultural level. Others who criticized the United States’ monolingual nature have highlighted problems in university-level language courses that result in students failing to reach higher levels of proficiency in a foreign language.
The term 'whisky' derives originally from the Gaelic 'uisge beatha', or 'usquebaugh', meaning 'water of life'. Gaelic is the branch of Celtic spoken in the Highlands of Scotland.
Same in Dutch (sinaasappel or appelsien) and from Dutch (as far as I know) it was borrowed into many languages, including Russian.
I've never in my Hispanic life heard someone showering with an artichoke.. this is maybe from a very specific country or region, and not part of the common Spanish language, I think.
Note: this post originally had 100 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Tibetan has its share. Motorcycles are "magic horses" or "machine horses" (eastern dialect). Computers are also electric brains, or even more literally lightning brains. Turtles are bony frogs. Gloves are hand covers, socks are foot covers and condoms are penis covers. Libraries are book treasury houses. Hospitals are medicine houses. Planes are air-boats, and elephants are literally bix oxen.
Book treasury houses ♡♡♡♡♡
sky-boats, sorry
Libraries are Treasury houses. Love that!
'Chrome horse' is a motorcycle for some in America.
I love this! So diverse, yet, one can tell the context of some of these literal translations. Amazing.
Missing some italian pearls, like English : "what's your name?" - italian : "how you call you ?" - English : "How old are you ?" - Italian : "how many hears you have ?" :D oh and "how are you doing" becomes "how goes" in italian 😂
Greenlandic: how many winters do you own.
We have something similar in Dutch. The translation is the same. But we use springs (as in season). We say: I am (in my case, I am 30) 30 springs young.
Its similar in slavic also.They say:koliko leta imas.The translation is the same just they use summer.
I don't know if it is an Italian thing or a my Italian mom thing, but she always said "close the light" instead of "turn off the light".
Same with portuguese, maybe comes from Latin lool
Same in other latin languages.
In naples area you "down the dog that I pee it" (walk the dog for his business), "open the building" (open the building door), while driving to warn someone you "knock" (the car horn), while to go to another level in a building you use "the wall train" (because elevators shows rails when they are in the middle of the ladders)
Same thing as Portuguese
Romanian, too
Both of these apply to Croatian as well, just I'd translate the 1st one as "how do you call yourself".
Same in French, Spanish, Catalan and Occitan :)
How are you called is not far from come ti chiami, btw...
German actually is very similar, "what's your name" means "how are you called" and "how are you doing" also means "how goes".
Tibetan has its share. Motorcycles are "magic horses" or "machine horses" (eastern dialect). Computers are also electric brains, or even more literally lightning brains. Turtles are bony frogs. Gloves are hand covers, socks are foot covers and condoms are penis covers. Libraries are book treasury houses. Hospitals are medicine houses. Planes are air-boats, and elephants are literally bix oxen.
Book treasury houses ♡♡♡♡♡
sky-boats, sorry
Libraries are Treasury houses. Love that!
'Chrome horse' is a motorcycle for some in America.
I love this! So diverse, yet, one can tell the context of some of these literal translations. Amazing.
Missing some italian pearls, like English : "what's your name?" - italian : "how you call you ?" - English : "How old are you ?" - Italian : "how many hears you have ?" :D oh and "how are you doing" becomes "how goes" in italian 😂
Greenlandic: how many winters do you own.
We have something similar in Dutch. The translation is the same. But we use springs (as in season). We say: I am (in my case, I am 30) 30 springs young.
Its similar in slavic also.They say:koliko leta imas.The translation is the same just they use summer.
I don't know if it is an Italian thing or a my Italian mom thing, but she always said "close the light" instead of "turn off the light".
Same with portuguese, maybe comes from Latin lool
Same in other latin languages.
In naples area you "down the dog that I pee it" (walk the dog for his business), "open the building" (open the building door), while driving to warn someone you "knock" (the car horn), while to go to another level in a building you use "the wall train" (because elevators shows rails when they are in the middle of the ladders)
Same thing as Portuguese
Romanian, too
Both of these apply to Croatian as well, just I'd translate the 1st one as "how do you call yourself".
Same in French, Spanish, Catalan and Occitan :)
How are you called is not far from come ti chiami, btw...
German actually is very similar, "what's your name" means "how are you called" and "how are you doing" also means "how goes".