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.
In England we call them ladybirds. Bug is an American term, not an English term. We call insects, err... insects.
Btw, "bug" should be for Hemiptera, but it became a general term for invertebrates with exoskeleton (not only insects). Btw2, ladybug is NOT an Hemiptera
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Now this sounds like it has a nice fairy tale type of backstory.
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In Afrikaans it's Liewenheersbesie. Is that the same word you use?
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Wow, how did the little red lady bug garner so much religious connotation? Not to mention comparisons to farm animals with which they have literally nothing in common ?
Similar to German. Marienkäfer. Käfer is bug, so its Bug calles Marie I guess
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Awww!! My son's alter ego was "Lady Bug" when he was little. I must tell him this!
"God´s little cow" - in Russian! And the word for God is also minimized :D So cute cuteness..
In Latvian... well, you can't even translate it. It's 'bizbizmārīte'. It's like 'bzzzbzzzbug' :)
Polish also has a less comon name for a ladybug meaning "Gods little cow" 😅
What? Boja kraviçka is not a ladybug. A ladybug is kalinka and boja kraviçka is a longer red bug with blag on it and it likes to ingest European homes especially in the winter
That sounds as though it could be a Lili beetle
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Argentina (cause is not like the other spanish spoken tell it) cow of san antony.. yeahh, i know
I expect English is from the same root: Our Lady = The Virgin Mary
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American is not a language :) American English of course is ;) So, without specification, bug is an English word. Also, ladybird? For a bug. The Brits win!
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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".
Peninsular Spanish (Castilian) has SO MANY incredible expressions. To say you're in a bad mood, you can say "estoy de mala leche" = "I'm of bad milk." To say you're going all in, you can say "de perdidos al río" = "from lost to the river." To express that something is surprising or incredible, you can say "cágate, lorito" = "shit, little parrot." I'm a translator and this whole post is fascinating.
sour puss
In Hebrew: "ani" means "me", "me" means "who", "who" means "he", and "he" means "she". Also, N is how you write the script letter "m" (mem).
Cool. Thanks for the mini Hebrew Lesson.
Isn't there an Abbot and Costello scetch about that?
Lol
English: Butterfly Norwegian: Summer Bird
Butter fly is a horrible name :S
English, half 12 (time) Swedish, half 1 Because it’s half TO the 1. Alway confirm what time you are meeting a Swede!
Same in Catalan but in quarters, so half past one is "two quarters of two"
A few Dutch examples: English: French toast Dutch: Turning bitches. (Bitches as in female dogs though;-) ) English: Leopard Dutch: Lazy horse English: Seal Dutch: Sea Dog English: Moped (vehicle) Dutch: Mustache bike English: Ambulance Dutch: Burn again / Burn weather
French toast in Finnish is "poor knights" :). The recipe is a bit different, but still, what a name!
I had to think about the 'burn again'. That would be the fire service/brigade (brandweer) rather than an ambulance (which stays the same in Dutch).
Crocodile in Vietnamese means ugly fish and a shark is a fat fish. Always thought people were joking when I started to learn the language& thought they were all into that:D
Helicopter isn't called a lifting screwdriver in german, but a lift screwer (Hubschrauber).
English: dental floss German: tooth silk
Argh though, I've always shuddered at the German translation of gums: toothmeat/flesh
I see a lot of Gaeilge, Irish, on this list, and I have to say I agree. Everything about it is dumb. Hello in Irish is Dia Daoibh, which literally translates to “God to you”
"Top of the morning to you" also has a correct response: "and the rest of the day to yourself"
Something I learned recently... Goodbye is from the early 1800s, and is a shortening of God be with ye. So even English to English translations are odd. :-)
A mobile phone/cell phone is a handy in German.
in flemish belgium "le gsm"
English: placenta Swedish: mother's cake
English: you'll be sorry Zulu: you'll point to the house with alcohol
Someone built a translation machine and into it fed "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" They translated it into Russian and back into English. They got back "The wine is agreeable but the meat has gone bad"
English has its own stupid terms: sea lion, sea horse, sea cow, sea monkey, sea urchin, sea cucumber, seaweed, dogfish, catfish, clown fish, bull shark, right whale, black rhino and white rhino (both are the same colour)... I'm sure there are other misnomers outside of the animal kingdom too.
This just Made my day
For any of you who are not Canadian or are not familiar with eggnog (a drink we have around Christmas time)... the French Canadian literal translation is hen milk, or better yet slut milk!