Translation errors and their consequences
- In 2016, a man died in France in the course of a drug study. One of the reasons given for this was a translation error.
- The former Catalan president, who wanted to lead his people into independence and then fled from the Spanish judiciary, sued the investigating judge on the basis of a statement that was given a completely different meaning by an accent misread by the translator and a forgotten comma: “If that was the case” became “yes, that’s exactly what it was”.
- The international fashion chain Zara named a summer shoe in the German trade “slave sandals” esclavas, in Spanish ambiguous, was thoughtlessly translated into German.