Hi!
This one is a true story, while not witnessed by myself.
Quote:
When TV didn't exist yet, in the glorious age of radio, it happens that a certain lady - let's call her Mrs. E. - worked in a private radio station. She had quite a pleasant voice and a very good diction so she had a lot of fans. Mrs. E. didn't speak a word of any foreign language.
One day she was presenting a songs program. So while a song was playing, she picked a good english-portuguese dictionary that was handy, and started translating word by word the title of the following one: "My love, come back to me". After a hard work she wrote down her final translation, a work of art.
When the playing song finished, while putting the new record on the dish, she announced the title (her translation) of the next one: "Amor, salta para as minhas costas!"
Do you know what that means in english? "Love, jump on my back!"
It took quite a while for Mrs. E. to recover from such a gaffe. And needless to say that she never translated any other title...
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Moral of the story: dictionaries can cause many damages!
Mind the dictionaries...
