A world of dodgy English

Sometimes you laugh. Sometimes you shake your head. Sometimes you can’t help but feel like tearing your hair out. Walking around Prague, a native English speaker can come across some rather, shall we say, amusingly-worded English-language signage. Should you say anything? Would that be rude, or welcomed? For months I’ve debated whether to tell the owner of a small stall in Holešovice selling “potatoe pies” – with an “e” – that his sign contained a Dan Quayle-sized error. Recently, while in a pub in Prague’s Vinohrady, I came across a menu, whose English language section was so riddled with unusual English that I felt compelled not only to make a note of it for the sake of posterity, but also to risk the unthinkable: to gently, politely, point out that there were, er, shall we say, some minor mistakes...

Photo: Kristýna Maková

“Domácí škvarky v sádle s cibulí a chlebem” was translated not as “greaves” in “lard”, but rather: “Home made graves in grease with onion and breat” – the last word being a typo for bread. Now, škvary probably aren’t the healthiest of foods, but “graves in grease” is surely going a little too far! Then there were “Kuřecí prsa se smetanovou omáčkou z lišek” – lišky being chanterelle mushrooms. But the English version of the menu instead offered the more literal translation: “Chicken breast with cream sauce foxes”. Yummy. Pity the tourist who has no idea as to what Czechs actually eat. The menu also contained countless other linguistic faux pas: “Na bramboráku” was translated as “To the potato”; decaffeinated was phrased as “cofeinfree”; coffee with only one “e”; croûtons were written with a “K” and wedges was spelled “vedges”.

After ever so politely pointing some of this out the waitress, she smiled, sighed and said her boss had used Google Translate for the English language menu. She added that she had been trying to persuade him to re-do it, to no avail (after all, Google Translate never lies, right?). In my local pub closer to the centre of town, there is a poster for a Prague taxi company that shall remained unnamed, displayed prominently in the toilet. The more beers I drink, the more I have to shake my head in disbelief at “Letištní přeprava” being translated as “The airport transport”, or the fact that the quotation marks for the English quotes on the poster are the „Czech upside down versions“, or the fact that the poster boldly proclaims “We appriciate your loyalty” – rather than the correct “appreciate” with an “e”.

Perhaps because I make part of my living translating from Czech to English, my sensitivities around such matters are higher than the average English visitor. Perhaps many English-speaking tourists get a kick out of some of these weird and whacky translations, rather than being insulted at the apparent amateurish lack of effort going in to wooing them. Still wary of my mastery of Czech, I know it isn’t easy going between languages. I once sent a Czech relative a gift with the incorrect words: “doufam že ti to bude k ničemu,” – “ničemu” with an “i” instead of an “e” changing the meaning from “I hope you find this useful” to “I hope you find this useless.” Yes, even a single letter can matter when translating from one language to another. And that is surely worth “appriciating”.