Tags
expat, Google Translate, humor, International Dog of Mystery, Italian, Italy, separated by common language, travel
I’ve been walking around Italy showing my phone to total strangers so they can read the (hopefully) Italian translation of my queries. Google Translate is a miracle app which translates conversations, websites, and random inscriptions on statues. Except when it doesn’t…
I tried to order some paper file folders for my temporary office. Simple enough, I thought, as I ran my request through Google Translate. Until the package arrived containing…
Piles of folded paper.
(Who buys stacks of folded paper? How is that even a thing?)
Google Translate says this sign on a window proclaims, “Here I do not do pipi and popo.” Okay, I admit that’s a little funny.
And then there was this one. It’s getting dark earlier, so I wanted to order a flashlight for the dog’s evening walks. OMG! Apparently, that translated into “male masturbators”.
Statue of Pinocchio in nearby park. Because NO! I did NOT take a picture of those search results.
(And okay, yes, I looked. I now have to go boil my eyeballs…)
Barb Taub 
The park looks lovely but now I’m wondering who/what might be hiding in the shrubbery 🙂
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Hopefully there aren’t people using “flashlights”!
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Only you could find these things, Barb!! Actually “pipi,popo” has quite a rhythm to it (should I have said that!?)
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It had to be said!
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I think you have to talk European to them, not American, which is quite a different language. What do you get it you p[ut in torch rather than flashlight?
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Not nearly as much fun?
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At our Portuguese holiday home we have a Roumanian cleaner. Some of our exchanges via Google Translate have been very confusing but she is such a good cleaner & keeps baking delicious cakes for us that we want her to stay for ever.
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But I’ll bet you wonder occasionally what you’ve actually said to each other…
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She does seem resistant to cleaning if we are not imminently arriving even though we are happy to pay her normal rate for airing the property.
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She probably tells everyone about the crazy foreigners who actually want to PAY her to clean uninhabited houses…
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You are absolutely right!
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What a great way to make friends! Oh, and add to the humour content in Italy.
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Or initiate international incidents, depending on the sense of humor of Google programmers.
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The more my French improved, the more I saw the errors and the difficulties in translation. There are, alas, somethings that simply do not translate.
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I am utterly in awe of people who do quick and accurate translations. I think it involves mind reading. Because as you say, there are some things that just do not translate.
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I can’t begin to imagine what a flashlight actually is (Italian version, natch). It must be something the romans used, which might explain why their empire fell. No, stop it, I shouldn’t have read this post, my mind is going to places reserved for wearers of long white socks and oleaginous garage mechanics. Are they disposable and is the link their need for batteries…? oh god, please, someone, confiscate my brain…
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You do NOT want to know. Trust me on this, or I’ll have to send the brain-confiscation team.
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I can’t stop laughing!
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Google translate says the Italian for that is “Sto scoppiando!” But I’m suspicious because when I plug “Sto scoppiando!” back in, the translation comes back “I’m exploding!”
Apparently laughter is LOTS more dangerous in Italy…
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HaHahaha!! Hilarious.
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I think it is hilarious, Barb. Our daughter was married to an Italian. She is fluent in the language. This is the child who hated languages in high school yet was the artist. She had to go to Italy after art school. That’s cool, but she couldn’t speak the language. Children diving head first into the water without a life jacket. She did it! I’ll skip the phone call asking me how to pluck the feathers from a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Back to the language, the name her children gave to their grandfather, Peepaw, is obscene in Italian. I just can’t tell him, I hope he never knows.
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