Top 15 Croatian Language Fails: Smallpox, Hand Jobs and a Burek Called Desire
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- Опубліковано 21 лют 2023
- I have very rarely cried with laughter when reading an article online, but TCN editor got me crying three time in the same month with her fabulous Lost in Translation series about Croatian language fails a few years go. You can find links to the original articles by Lauren below, but we thought it might make a fun video to compile the best of the best. Hope you enjoy.
Smallpox, Diarrhoea and Free Hand Jobs: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Leprosy, Bitches and a Burek named Desire: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Shakespeare, the Pope and the Way to the ''See'': Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Adverbs, Cocks and Dalmatian Furniture: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Winos, Doggy Style and Strange Furious Drinks: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Lubricator, Prefects, and Middle-Earth Moving Cake: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Paper Sauce, Bears, and Fertilisers of Rice: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Prize Lists, Cold Deposits and Viagra: Lost in Translation in Croatia - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
Lost in Translation in Croatia: Bears, Acid, and Worm Appetisers - www.total-croatia-news.com/li...
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One of the oldest example of direct translation, still sometimes used as a joke, is: "kako da ne" = "how yes no".
was just about to write that
¸Another one is "prevedite me preko seste" =translate me across the streeet"
As if = Kako da ne
A classic
Who plums you
There is one menu with "Međimurska gibanica - Middle-earth moving cake" 😄
Yes tbat is in one of Laurens original articles which you can read in the video description
😂😂😂 watch out Frodo Baggins!
😂😂😂😂
Google translate beware!
Ne mogu, umirem 🤣 Ne znam koji mi je od ovih najdraži, nemoguć izbor.
Da dodam i ja jedan primjer, ali u drugom smjeru. Jednom prilikom, davno prije Google Translatea, čitao sam neku knjigu prevedenu na hrvatski i u jednom trenu lik u priči kaže drugom "prerežimo govno!" Koje sad govno, iruda ti? Na tren me potpuno zbunilo, dok mi nije sinulo da je prevoditelj samo doslovno preveo frazu "let's cut the crap" 🙂
Haha
Ovo je vrh
@@bernardokrolo2275 haha hvala
I was once in Dubrovnik and read a menu where it had "Octopussy" Salad. Fortunately I can read Croatian and realized they were trying to say Octopus Salad. My Canadian wife couldn't quite understand how a fictional movie character from James Bond made it on the menu.
Haha
😅🤣😂 Priceless
Noice xD
I've seen this a couple times on the islands xD
hilarious, 😂😂😂😂😂 still laughing
and I already thought: *egg on the eye* 🍳 was funny !
And a Croat who knows English would be amused by the "sunny side up" ( suncana strana gore:)), in other words, "priceless" is a cute word too. How many garages are sold without houses in N. America? Rascal is a "fakin" in Dalmatia. There are so many more to make you laugh for days. These are all "fakta" heard on the streets in Croatia.
Haha
🤣🤣 I found on one place "preljevi" (toppings) translated as "overflow".
Nice
Croat diaspora here. One of the small things I love about visiting a restaurant / konoba / cafe is the translation on menu items. Me and my brothers laugh at it everytime.
Agreed
Ah, the beauty of literal translations. :) I can imagine the ones who were trying to translate "kozice". When they googled it and got "smallpox", it sounded about right as "kozica" sounds like a diminutive from "koza" - meaning it was something "small"... so "smallpox" must've sounded perfect!
Yes, as with chicken pox.
- watery goats.
kozice in croatian can mean smalpox or prawns - so consulting a google translator can play tricks on you...
Actually, the disease smallpox is "vodene kozice", or "kozice" for short. According to Google Translate, if you ask it to translate from Croatian into English, it really offers only one option for "kozice", smallpox. However, if you ask it to translate from English into Croatian, smallpox is translated as "velike boginje". And if you ask it to translate shrimps into Croatian, it translates it as "škampi", which is the wrong translation. It should be prawns. Somebody at Google didn't do a good job, and it's created all this confusion. An endless supply of laughter though. LOL!
Smallpox je i u medicinskoj terminologiji zeznuta stvar. Tu se i mnogi jezični znalci nerijetko zbune. "Pox" je nešto što se na hrvatski prevodi kao "boginje" radi cijelog niza virusnih bolesti koje izazivaju virusi iz porodice poxviridae. Konkretno, smallpox su u Hrvatskoj zapravo velike boginje (ne male) odnosno variola ili variola vera. Ono što mi zovemo male boginje odnosno ospice ili morbili na engleskom su zapravo measles, rubeola (USA), red measles, english measles. A ono što mi zovemo vodene kozice (varičela, varicelle) na engleskom je chickenpox. A Srbi ih zovu ovčije boginje. Da zakompliciram do kraja - ono što mi zovemo rubeola ili crljenica na engleskom (USA) je zapravo rubella ili german measles. A kao što sam već prije napisao, ono što je kod njih rubeola kod nas nije "naša" rubeola nego ospice. Zato je možda radi izbjegavanja zabune stvari nazivati kao morbili, variola, varičela, crljenica. Nije niti Google prevoditelju lako kad mu netko na meniju ponudi kozice.
@@marijanglavina2512 Trebate javiti Google-u! Olakšali biste život mnogima. Izvrsno objašnjenje. Naučila sam nešto danas. Znala sam za neke riječi, ali ne sve.
Oh gosh I I didn't expect to cry of laughter 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thanks Paul 🤗😃
Haha
I remember how they solved this problem on Santorini. Left side was written in Greek, using the Greek alphabet. On the right side, which said "English" it was the same text, but written in Latin script. Very helpful.
Brilliant
My family owns a restaurant and they once ordered new menus so the printing company told them they'd provide English menus for free. However the outcome was hilarious, including "roasted paper", "imperial meat", "champion mushrooms", and just to make sure no expectations were ever met - all variations of pljeskavica were translated as hamburgers.
haha
Hshahaa
Imperial meat😂😂😂
Love it👌🏻👌🏻
Carsko meso😂
Just great! Now I must wipe off coffee from my keyboard because of laugh.
Haha
also, we like to ‘directly’ translate croatian celebrities names like Matko Jelavić (well, who is a little lion?) or Dražen Zečić (honey bunny) 😂😂 I love your channel. hope to have a coffe with you in split or šolta one day!
Haha tx
A Vladimir Fermivaš Kunelić ? Old school :)
Or principal of one of the Zagreb's elementary schools...Mr. Dragi Zeko.
I improved my abs workout 😂😂😂
But man is real.
Or in Sabor when guy said to Mr Fabris Peruško If you would wake up in the middle of the night you would not your own name...😂😂😂
Vincent Wolf (Vice Vukov )
@@markmalic7450 😂
ćevapi s lukom - minced meat with bow 😀
Haha
Dear Paul. I love you mentioned this. I always have lots of laugh over those literal translations. It's a gold mine. You made me laugh pretty good. Love this classic english humor. Lots of love from Zg. ❤️ Brilliant as always. Cheers 🥂 p.s. Sorry for miss spells.😁
Glad you enjoyed it!
Glad to hear this from an English speaking person. Usually they don’t understand the big advantage of the phonetic writing, and fall for the unnatural English spelling where they stupidly memorize the words’ spelling, instead to write as they hear. Phonetic writing systems are adopted not just in Serbo-Croatian, but in all other Slavic and most of the Romance languages. Same goes for most of Germanic languages. Only English and partially French are the stubborn isolates that obviously need a spelling reform. Every smart nation has its language written phonetically, it’s the final time for English to join them as well.
The longer I live abroad, the less English and the UK make sense
I see other comments already explaining why these mistakes might have happened. Such explanations can actually offer great insight into a language. While native speakers may be surprisingly unaware of these "inner workings" they can be devastatingly confusing for new learners.
I laughed for 5 minutes straight 😂 one gulas with george clooney please
Haha
🤣 Google translate fails! There are a few Facebook groups dedicated to this.
A favourite of mine is "boiled bull" for "kuhana govedina".
Haha
I've seen in menus "prilozi" getting translated as "adverbs" instead of "toppings".
I thought prilozi is plural for prilog, meaning side dish.
@@MK-ln6nb basically yes, but if you're ordering a sandwich at a fast food restaurant i cant think of another word for toppings in your sandwich (tomato, lettuce, mayo...) except "prilog/prilozi", but mostly the worker will just ask you "šta ćemo unutra" or something like that, which means "what do you want inside the sandwich" in this context :)
@@LK25278 oh ok, never ordered a sandwich in Croatia, they weren't a thing decades ago when I lived there.
@@MK-ln6nb oh wow, do you mind my asking where you're from, where you stayed in Croatia and when was it?
@@LK25278 Australian born and raised but lived in Daruvar & Zagreb in the 80s for about 4 yrs when my parents moved back there.
I'm dying! 🤣🤣 Here's another one when we want to help an old British lady cross the street: "Would you like me to translate you on the second page of the street?"
Haha
And the winner is: Ćevapčići in a leprosy 👌
It is certainly in the top 5
Part with diarrhea was icing on the cake :) - hvala na genijalnom videu.
Haha it was quality
Gosh, that was funny. Made me laugh. Thank you for sharing this.
Lots more coming if you want to subscribe
There are a lot of people in Croatia who speak fluent English and often have a much better grasp of the language than most native English speakers. Clearly none of them work in, or have been consulted by owners of, restaurants! My favourite here was the pate!
It is a great list
hahaha glad you covered this subject, made me lol 😆 Wish I could see the faces of tourists when they read stuff like this in the menu 😁Translating some Croatian words and sayings directly to English is also source of much fun here. Maybe you could make a video about that too (dapače - yes little duck, kako da ne - how yes no, ubiti oko - kill an eye, tko te šljivi - who plums you, etc)
Haha, yes this is just a sample. There is a link to all Lauren's videos in the video description.
Unfortunately this is the case all over the Balkans (for designing as well) . Everybody thinks they can translate the menus, 'nema problema moj sin zna engleski', instead of hiring a professional .... it's a "WAIST" of money :)
One of my many jobs was translating and editing from English into Croatian, and vice versa. A colleague of mine, who should've known better as she had a Master's degree in English, translated "Anybody who enters, will be fired" as "Tkogod uđe, bit će zapaljen", which means "Anybody who enters, will be set on fire". I couldn't stop laughing. So, even if you hire an expert, you might get lost in translation. LOL!
Haha vrh
@@granadacrain5219 It was a cartoon meme within a book that was translated. And a manager might to do that if they're exasperated with non-stop interruptions and people not heeding their requests not to be interrupted while they're working on something important that requires their full attention.
Don't blame him. Blame it on the English language. "Fired" should mean set on fire. Not a word for the termination of employment.
I really had a good laugh during and after this video 😅😁😂
Great
you certainly aren’t mocking, but some of those signs are actually done on purpose, to make fun of all those times we saw badly written english. it’s very hard to distinguish which are actual mistakes from the ones made for fun :)
Haha
Yeah, it's like that unofficial competition between screenwriters in Hollywood, about who can write the most ridiculous and over-the-top computer hacking scene. Only, here it's about the most ridiculous and over-the-top mis-translation.
The last one got me laughing so hard 🤣, It is a perfect name
Haha
Great content Paul! Greetings from Zagreb
Glad you enjoyed it! Lots more to come if you want to subscribe
I love these and im glad i've found one with my fellow croatians
Great
A good laugh 😃 . Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it
I love your video, Paul! :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is the great channel ever.
Haha not sure i agree on that one, but glad you think so. Lots more coming if you want to subscribe
Thank you, I died laughing! Now I need to take care of my monitor. :p From my locals here are two: old recipe called "Kokoš na zeca" (with gnocchi) with its literal translaton "Chicken on Bunny" and Seljačka pizza (Villager Pizza).
Haha
Thank you for this Paul, it is hilarious🤣👍reminds me of my travels to China..the absolute winner there was a sign board saying " toilet - chamber of ten thousand flowers" - found in the Yu gardens of Shanghai😃
Haha quality
Meni je najbolji prijevod jela "Pivac s prilogom" kao "Singer with attachment"
Vrh
May I add: the sign for apartment for rent reads APARTMENT-FREE, they mean VACANT or APP, they mean apartment.
yes that is common
Worthy successor of "Zimmer frei"
Is "Zimmer frei" ok, I wonder?
Don't speak german but in american english it is VACANT not FREE@@josiprakonca2185
thanks Paul, "to the bitch" had me in stitches. I think some of these mistakes were intentional though.
Haha, which ones
"čevapčići in a leprosy" seems like someone was trying to be creative with their use of language. The word leprosy (guba in Croatian) can also refer to a species of fungus ( just google brezova guba ), which does somewhat resemble a lepinja. "Burek od zelja" is also interesting because the word zelja is quite similar to želja (desire in English) so I think whoever translated that did that on purpose. Google translates this as "greens burek", which is correct. Take care
🤣😅😄😂😄😅🤣 Awesome...!!! Paul, 👍...
haha thanks
Also, occasionally in restaurants I see "prilozi" (side dishes) translated as "adverbs".
Yes if you look in the vid description, you will see all Laurens articles with many more examples
@@PaulBradbury thanks, I'll check it out. I need a good laughter.
I live in Dubrovnik, and the beach near me used to offer "frozen beer". I think they meant ice cold.....
Nothing beats a cold one by the sea
Sir, I recommend you to visit a small town Požega. The heart of slavonia. This is where I was born. A beautiful town in the lowlands and on the hills. It looked much better before the corruption began. Politicians and the bishop in Požega destroyed the beauty of this town. Took down the trees, shut down the only cinema we had, shut down some cafes because it was too loud for the “high bishop”😒, but the beauty prevailed in some parts of the town. It is worth visiting.
I have been to Pozega. Nice place, lovely people, very hospitable.
@@PaulBradbury So nice to hear sir! Hope you had an amazing time!
I haven't seen many of those here in Croatia, but had a great laugh in Thailand 😅😅😅😅
I can imagine
Shrimp on the way home. 🦐 😂
In a slight tangent I remember taking my son to the doctor when he contracted chicken pox while on Easter holidays.
From that day on said ailment will forever be watery goats. 🐐 🐐 🐐
Goaties, ro be correct 😂
Haha
these are really easy to find all over croatia. you'll be relieved that the restaurant near me doesn't actually serve "worm meals"
My dad always found it funny how “varam te” and “warranty” sound kinda similar. He’d say “you see, we already know how to speak English.”
haha vrh
Years ago I met an American girl that I immediately fell in love with. I tried in my broken English to tell her "I had sympathy" for her...I could tell it didn't go over well. Her look said it all.
Croatian word "simpatija" means affection in English... Not a word one uses at the funeral...
Yes that word has caused quite a lot of confusion over the years
damn some of these have really suprised me :D
Haha
0:08 Romanian is a phoentic language as well. It seems countries in South Eastern Europe usually tend to be phonetic languages.
How did it come to be that Romanian is the only Romance language in the region, do u know?
@@PaulBradbury It was spoken everywhere, cause of Roman empire, there is small population on Istria speaking Istro-Romani/Vlach. There was Dalmatian language, another Romani language. Illyrian tribes had many different languages, then it was replaced with Latin, which gave birth to different Romance languages, Later came Slavs that brought their own language. Even Romanian have a lot of slavic words, but they kept their own Romani. Linguists know better than me :)
literally crying,, i am from cro and i have seen stuf but not as much as you did aparantly
Lots more coming if u want to subscribe
Spot on Paul..love your work
..if you ever come on down
Down Under
Beers on me
Long way to come for a beer but thanks for the offer
Was crying all the way...Pozdrav iz Varaždina
Haha
Some of those are likely Google translations. Words might have two meanings depending on context (kozice), but google doesn't know that. And on top of that, if you mistype original word, Google will auto-correct and _then_ translate.
But on the other hand I don't understand why people don't ask for help before spending money to print a menu.... oh yes, I remember (being Croatian myself): Croats don't ask for help, we know how to do everything. Or if we don't then we have a teenage nephew who knows....
Haha
I always wonder: what kind of serious businessman can open the business and use google translator for his business?
Madness
I would like to know more about the thought process that produced the translation "celebrity" from tjestenina...
I think we all would
I have impression that sometimes they do it on purpose to amuse guests while waiting for food to be prepared on a full night.
Smallpox is quite a common dish in the menus
Maybe 1pc but i point the mistakes out and they are mortified
Hahahahaha...najs wačed...
Haha
1:20 "...is rather unfortunate" haha
Haha
Where exactly can we buy tickets for your stand-up show? 🤩
Haha, actually the real comedian is Lauren Simmonds. If you look in the video description, you will see links to all the original articles she wrote on this. Fabulously funny.
These are hilarious!!
haha lots more coming if you want to subscribe
Please, translete me to another page of the street. LOL
3:55 🤣😂
Shrimp on the way home can't be real? 😁
I cant believe any of it is real
Pošto si moj Pavle dalmatinac mogu na naški😂 kako me ti stari nasmiješ ne pada mi teško ni noćna smjena u casinu 😆
Dalmatinac ne more bit Pavle nego Pave
@@dtikvxcdgjbv7975 ma zamisli ti kako sve znaš
Happy to hear that
Pop pjevač - priest singer is classic.
😂😂😂😂 that's google translate where google doesn't recognise the diacritics marks possibly
Well, our folks suffer from certain mixture of selfconfidence and intellectual neglectance. All of this mentioned in your clip is funny but tragic in the same time. Maybe it is also a consequence of quick sollutions on google translation service of modern time living on gadgets, without knowing enough about the very matter of investigation. For a country almost fully dedicated to tourism, this particularly shows how local people ignore reasonable approach to important matters, and it is visible everywhere, not only in most developed touristic areas at the seaside but in Zagreb as well. Somehow people generally think that it is tolerable and it is not going to have any effect on business, or on the other hand they are convinced they did everything correctly. I have been trying for years to persuade waiters in a small hotel in Vela Luka to change wrongly written German name of a certain dessert meal in their menu. There 's no need to tell you that all my efforts were useless, despite I was having dinner year after year there. In Samobor, small tourist destination 20km from Zagreb, where I work, we use to go often to pizzeria for snack time-out. In their menu 70% of Italian titles for pizza types are written wrong! The owners don't bother at all...
I hear you - there is a lot of inertia in the hospitality industry
I will never forget a huge sign for a popular restaurant nearby Plitvice Lakes. They advertised piglet on a spit, translated into German " Säugling am Spies" which means " newborn baby on a spit". Every time I'd drive by, I'd ponder about stopping and telling them about their mistake. But I never did, instead got a good laugh every time. The sign stood there for years.
Lol, today Google translates piglet (odojak) into "breast milk"!
Haha quality - thanks for sharing.
AAaaaaaaaaahhahahahahahahah......you've made me cry.......hahahahaha....Goodness me, were did you find those translations?
From articles by our editor Lauren Simmonds. Check the video description for a full list
This is glorious 🤣
Haha tx
As a Croat who speaks English every day, I work with workers from the Philippines and India. I live right by the coast and I see funny signs on restaurants and fast food. I offered to correct some of their translation errors in exchange for a good meal for my girlfriend and me. One restaurant owner told me that there is no need because Google tanslate is free and that I just want to get a free meal. Restaurant owners are mostly primitive people who only care about profit. Employees are brought in from villages in the mountains of the Balkans, who are paid minimally and hardly communicate with us Croats, let alone tourists. We have strong hospitality schools where people speak several languages in addition to English. But the problem is that they have to pay that educated man . The one he dragged from the mountain is his slave and these people work in impossible conditions 16 hours a day 7 days a week
Man that was hilarious, Dalmacija never change. 😅
My father learned russian in school and my mother learned german so they strugle with english too.
But do we want it to change?
@@PaulBradbury of course not, handjobs is just good marketing. 🙂
😂😂😂 awesome!
Haha
English is anything but hard to master including written English for someone coming from another Indo-European language, try Chinese or any other tonal language with a different script.
😄😄😄the best
haha thanks
My friend's brother took the Burek with desire picture 😁
Would love to buy him a beer of thanks when in Zagreb
@@PaulBradbury He's from Split though
hilarious 😂
Haha
Tata, koje boje su šljive.
Plave sine.
Pa zašto su ove crvene?
Zato što su još zelene sine.
Hilarious. Have you ever tried Janjetina s ražnja? Its basically lamb on a spit. But this is only good in dalmatia, and it is very hard to find any restaurants that do really good job with it and the kind of lamb is specific for this. Its allmost impossible to find and good lamb for this in country side Croatia.
it is one of my favourite things here
😂Well done.. Congrats
Thanks - lots more coming if you want to subscribe.
Breakfast: eggs on eye 😂😂😂
haha
🤣🤣🤣 not only in English! In German the same!
Am sure it is
It's sad that people that write the menues don't handle english so good.They can easly google it up or just ask someone if they are not sure.
Yes it is crazy - why put so much effort into a restaurant and then let yourself down on the selling side?
A Pavao KruhSahranio?
I think some of these are from Bosnia and Serbia. Džigerica is not a Croatian word.
My favourite is 'half-island Peljesac', which actually is not that wrong. It's my dearest though....I mean Peljesac....paradajz!
It is a great place
When using google translate goes wrong 🤣🤣🤣
Yep
1:31 if you think of the word „manufacture“ its from latin: manus (hand) and facere (to make) so it‘s literally to make by hand. I guess hand jobs are also something you „make by hand“ so it‘s not all wrong 😂
(Sometimes it‘s helpful to bear in mind that the Croatian language has a lot of „mistranslated“ latin words)
Haha, I guess it is technically correct, but technical hand jobs do sound a little different
Lol 🤣
Some of the translations are even better than the proper ones! 🤣
True story
Shrimps on the way home!!! 🤣🤣🤣
Don't knock it until you have tried it
"dapače" - "yes little duck"
Da pače , yes little duck
To be fair, plata
,or plate (plural), is Serbian word for wages🤣 ....Croatian would be osobni dohodak (formal) or plaća ( plaaa- chaa) (informal)
aha, thanks for the info
"Mlada jagnjetina" - "Young lamb meat" in Lika.
Now I am hungry.
I once ordered "young lamb". It was very, very tough...hard to cut and chew.
I asked the waiter: "Are you sure this was lamb and not some old mutton?"
He said: "Sir, I assure you this lamb was running after its mother, just yesterday..."
I don't doubt it...was it for the milk or for sex?
@@samkitty5894 Wow! Even the old mutton can be delicious if prepared properly. If the local chef isn't that experienced, there's "young" lamb on "advertising table" (a piece of wood with brush painted letters on it), particularly from May to late September 😁. Go figure !
hahahaha 👌🙌
I also honestly don't know what is "poljev"
It was a new word to me
Kind of like gravy...something to pour over potatoes or pasta.
Hilarious... A lot of this is what happens someone who only speaks their native tongue is given the task of translating something. They'll use google translate and will have no idea that the word they put in could have a completely different meaning in the language they are translating to, it's simply not a phenomenon they are aware of. Salaries for two people, lmao
Very true
this is soooo embarassing!! Noooo!!! Funny as hell too!!
Haha
😁😁😁