Mistranslations
Literal translation of idioms is a source of numerous translators' jokes and apocrypha. The following famous example has often been told both in the context of newbie translators and that of machine translation: When the sentence "The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak" (an allusion to Mark 14:38) was translated into Russian and then back to English, the result was "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten." This is generally believed to be simply an amusing story, and not a factual reference to an actual machine translation error.Literal translation can also denote a translation that represents the precise meaning of the original text but does not attempt to convey its style, beauty, or poetry. Charles Singleton's translation of The Divine Comedy (1975) is regarded as a literal translation. Source
Tags: Mistranslations, Mistranslation, Literal Translation, Translation, Machine Translation,
