LUDICROUS TRANSLATIONS I HAVE SEEN

Well-meaning folk know that schadenfreude, the taking of delight in others’ misfortune, is neither big nor clever – it is an invention of Germans with low self-esteem who wish to make themselves feel better. But I simply had to share what follows, due to it being the extraordinary masterwork of an apparently pinga-addled mind.

I have recently been asked by a company in São Paulo to give prospective Portuguese-English translators a mark out of ten based on a test they complete and email to the company. Normally their attempts are marred by tell-tale Brazilian mistakes - misuse of prepositions, making adjectives plural, using “of” all the time instead of the possessive apostrophe, etc. (I am exacting, the Judge Dredd of bilinguistics).

Then, one day I received the following. By the end of the first sentence I usually know whether it’s worth continuing, but this chap’s attempt took things to a whole new level. He starts, presumably soberish, making a few errors in the first few lines, then just loses it completely – it turns into the jottings of a madman. It’s the kind of text you might expect to find scrawled on the wall next to the bath in a lunatic asylum, punctuation everywhere but where it should be, the random use of capital letters, the skew-whiff syntax the grammatical equivalent of pissing in the wind.

By the final paragraph he’s clearly cracking open his second bottle of 51, throwing his future into the lap of the gods and inventing his own technical terms (or is “punseazoned” really a word?)

So, here it is. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read it – there’s something deeply tragi-comic about somebody with this level of English seriously expecting to be employed as a translator.

Anyway, bottoms up!

“Prepare to know a company which 33 years have been transforming energy with high quality products. Located, at city of [city], in the northwestern zone´s São Paulo state, the [company name] take an area. Of 14 thousand square meters, being 12 thousand meters already constructed. Has today your name recognized in whole Brazil, in several countries of Latin America, Central America and Africa.

“Graces to constants investments in equipments of last generation, the [company name] is the Leader in the market of Monophasic Transformers Revolving Nuclear and Pilled up, arranging one of the most sophisticated and moderns to process of Production, besides of continuing improving of knowledge of their engineers, Technicians and collaborators to the manufacture of their products and the dedicate Ton and engaging of all team in produce products with quality.

“Like this transformers, the tension regulators, are also knower to the consumer Market like of excellent quality, of simple installation and robust construction, Could be using as much as in the city of substations, in any extremity of an electric distribution system, as much as in a entering substation for an specific Consumer.

“Also can be used utilized in radiation nets or in rings, that provides a system of detection and automatic operation and for the inverse power fluxion, having like Exclusive characteristics: the control with three profiles of independent punseazoned Need power to direct fluxion and one to the direct fluxion”