Lost in Google Translate: U.S. show’s attempt at Hebrew runs afoul June 14, 2012
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Fun stuff.trackback
It’s a busy day for international translation blooper news.
The Israeli news website Haaretz.com is reporting that the Showtime show “Episodes,” which stars Matt LeBlanc (formerly from “Friends”) featured a Jewish headstone in a recent episode. Apparently the show’s producers used that wonderful, all-knowing, never-failing translation tool Google Translate to write the caption. As the article explains, “In the third episode of the U.S.-British co-production’s second season, one of the scenes takes place in a cemetery, where a headstone is visible and inscribed in both English and what appears to be an attempt at Hebrew, reading “Beloved husband and father, dearly missed. However, the Hebrew text was both written in reverse and badly translated, as blogger Shahar Golan pointed out: “At first the Hebrew words did not make any sense, until I realized the letters were in reverse order: left to right, instead of right to left.”” Apparently they wanted to say ‘he will be dearly missed’ but the literal translation into Hebrew was ‘he was pickled at great expense.‘ Good on Shahar Golan for catching it and writing about it on his blog. Thanks to Rina Ne’eman of Hebrew Language Services for sharing this with us on Facebook!
Musings from an overworked translator 
Pickled at great expense? I wasn’t aware of that Jewish burial practice, and without the wonderful technology of Google, I might have remained ignorant.
Google translate really helps them a lot .