Arabic Translation Fail Goes Global and Causes Twitter Storm

We have another addition to the growing collection of awful Arabic to English translations courtesy of Twitter user Hend Amry!

Staying at the Erbil International Hotel in Iraq, she was perplexed by the translation of a meatball dish she found in front of her.

Somehow the hotel had translated the dish into English as “Paul is dead”.

Why and how? Well she guesses it has something to do with the way the original sounds –  ‘mayit baul’ – quite literally translating from Arabic into English as ‘dead Paul’!

The Arabic translation fail is a perfect example of what happens when you leave translations to computers and/or those with a poor understanding of language.

The Tweet led to a storm of people’s favourite examples of translations gone bad, including Thamina the Terrible’s which we though shows you just how awfully bad translations can really get! Imagine your business adopting this translation process!?

Moral of the story?

Take translations seriously otherwise people could be laughing at it all over the world! The story has been picked up by media outlets internationally – not exactly the PR the hotel may have been aiming for…

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