Comments on: Sorry about that extra arm

By: NoHaR

NoHaR — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:15:07 +0000

Actually, it’s the automatic translation of an orthographic error in french… so it is as much “flench” than engrish…

By: NoHaR

NoHaR — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:14:08 +0000

*LITTLE KNOWN FACT #75012*

Did you know the Eiffel Tower was made out of plutonium ?

By: bolognahead

bolognahead — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:52:27 +0000

All the French I know, I learned from Eddie Izzard. Je ne peux pas trouver la plume de mon uncle.

By: T

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:05:38 +0000

I don’t even think the French is right, I think they’re trying to say: The Eiffel Tower is being modernized. The management apologizes for any (inconvenience) caused by the work.

By: Gryphin

Gryphin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:04:34 +0000

hmm I was not especially replying to choubbi, I must have clicked the wrong “reply” link.
But while I’m here, choubbi, you spell “it’s” when you can replace it by “it is” and “its” when you can replace it by “hers”, you also spell “they’re” when you can replace it by “they are”.

By: Gryphin

Gryphin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:18 +0000

It reminds me of a girl who asked for “raped carrots” in a diner.
(carottes râpées = grated carrots)

By: Goose

Goose — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:30:17 +0000

Worst translation Ever !

By: French

French — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:51:29 +0000

phonetically correct but misspelled

By: PoodleGroomer

PoodleGroomer — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:51:14 +0000

J’ai pris mon lévrier afghan pour les aspirateurs.

By: JohnB

JohnB — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:02:09 +0000

I could never tell anyone else, since I really have no idea what you just said!

By: keff

keff — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:52:43 +0000

Le caniche est allergique à la moquette….

By: buckinarut

buckinarut — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:28:17 +0000

I was wondering about that myself, ‘specially since I don’t parlez-vous.

Is that like NAMBLA?
Hmmm?!

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:17:16 +0000

A joke for people who take French too literally:

Societe d’Exploitation…
Hmm…

By: dr handle

dr handle — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:27:40 +0000

You bucked that one right up, huh? Never mind, there will be much silliness to come I’m sure.

By: dr handle

dr handle — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:26:21 +0000

Je ne peux pas trouver la plume de ma tante.

By: dr handle

dr handle — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:24:19 +0000

And appalling halitosis, so bad that it sometimes catches fire.

By: dr handle

dr handle — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:23:34 +0000

*embarrassing private joke time* My dear husband refers to me as Dr Poo, and describes me as travelling through space-time in my TURDIS (passing through his reality occasionally). Apparently, the chameleon circuit is fried, so it’s stuck looking like a Portaloo. But don’t tell anybody else, you have to keep that secret.

By: Idir

Idir — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:14:03 +0000

I kinda guessed that even the French part was wrong.

By: bobalachabbs

bobalachabbs — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:11:24 +0000

This has to be the crappiest translation from French I have ever seen. It’s not like this is some backwater place in Normandy, this is the freakin’ Eiffel Tower. I think the thing that makes me laugh the most is how beautifully eloquent it is in French, and then in English sounds just as bad as the rest of the stuff on this site.

By: buckinarut

buckinarut — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:51:38 +0000

French professor I had at university was telling me about this. He told me it was essentially true what is said about French hostility toward Americans, except when you head up to the north, to Normandy. There, the people who are old enough to remember 1944 (or perhaps more importantly, the years immediately prior to 1944) love the hell out of Americans, and surprisingly like the Brits, and couldn’t be nicer.

I don’t think you’re being overly harsh, and the situation is still funny or exasperating. The Academy (I’ve forgotten its French name) is an idiotic idea; I guess it continues today (if I recall, it has been around a few centuries) a leftover de Gaullist/Conservative attempt to protect the glory of the France that was from being defiled by those barbaric ‘mericans and their barbaric tongue…. it’s funny, too, watching them trying to deal with the flood of Americanisms, especially all the tech and computer terms…

This should be a warning to the US, if the majority of Americans would be aware of this. I remember someone, can’t remember who, on the topic of the growth of Spanish in the US and the attempts by lots of people to make English the “official” language, “if you have to establish English, or any language, as the ‘official’ language, then that tells you English has ceased to be the ‘official’ language.”
De jure vs. de facto.

Well, C’est la vie, or c’est la France. We have more than enough arrogance and xenophobia on both sides of the pond, they just manifest themselves differently. But only slightly.

By: JohnB

JohnB — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:27:35 +0000

You have GOT to work on your self-concept if you think of yourself as Doc Turd!

By: darthkain

darthkain — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:19:00 +0000

Don’t worry, I brought enough towels for everyone!

By: fake_buster

fake_buster — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:10:51 +0000

J’espère de tout mon coeur que c’est un fake…

By: JohnB

JohnB — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:04:20 +0000

Don’t trifle with the Eiffel!

By: JohnB

JohnB — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:42:33 +0000

That’s what all the pirates say!

By: JohnB

JohnB — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:14:48 +0000

That Gene is known to be associated with excessive tongue length.

By: Basara

Basara — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:59:06 +0000

This is what happens when you legislate against use of other languages – When the time comes that you DO need to use them, you’re likely to find your warning signs written by the dumbest internet translation site you can find, and no one there to backstop it that actually knows the language. (At least in the U.S. such a problem, when it occurs, is a result of poor attempts to educate the populace in a second language, not blindly going to a translation site)

Strange how many people OUTSIDE Paris could have written the sign correctly – especially senior citizens in the stretch between Normandy & the Rhine – and asked if you wanted the British or American spellings for certain words…

(and, yes, I’m being a bit overly harsh on it for comedic purposes)

By: soseyaknow

soseyaknow — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:44:30 +0000

The back story is…they’re in the process of rebuilding the West pillar of the tower…so it’s closed for a while, all barricaded off, etc., etc. So this sign is an apology from the *management* (which is direction in French) — for making you walk to one of the other pillars.

It also messes with taking photos under the tower, as there’s this big ugly wall in the middle of everything.

By: choubbi

choubbi — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:09:54 +0000

Yes, that’s because French is a hard language, that one is not a big mistake, I personally don’t know the accent configuration of lots of words (è and ê are pronounced the same way, and I’m not aware of a rule to determine which one it is. Just have to learn it for each word).
But we also have scary stuff such as the English speakers’ their/they’re, its/it’s, etc…

By: dr handle

dr handle — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:41:02 +0000

“Of course, he only had the two arms and the one head at the time…”

By: dr handle

dr handle — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:40:11 +0000

Franglais! J’adore le franglais, c’est le mutt’s nuts.

By: dr handle

dr handle — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:38:46 +0000

Worse. It was Gene Simmons.

By: dr handle

dr handle — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:38:07 +0000

So is death. So watch it, smarty-bum.

By: Susannie

Susannie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:58:45 +0000

Wow, I’m angry…

By: Susannie

Susannie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:58:03 +0000

I for one can’t wait to see the modernized Eiffel Tower. I think we can all agree that the tower IS rather old-fashioned and need a make over.

(Also, I can’t wait to see my avatar here )

By: Droll not Troll

Droll not Troll — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:52:58 +0000

You should wear genes if you visit the tower while works are in progress. Your evening dress may get damaged.

By: Gorgon Medusa

Gorgon Medusa — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:27:14 +0000

No, I am afraid it was DCI Gene Hunt…

By: buckinarut

buckinarut — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:46:40 +0000

And I do realize that explaining the joke forks up the joke quite severely. I so sorry.

By: buckinarut

buckinarut — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:45:24 +0000

Excuse me for being a bit Arthur Dent, but Do Whut? This about the 2 headed thing, right?

By: buckinarut

buckinarut — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:42:51 +0000

“gene caused by these works”
They putting a breeder reactor up on top?

Plus, East and North are the only directions that are sorry and apologizing. The West and South really don’t give a merde about causing you gene for modernizing these works.

By: hollyr57

hollyr57 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:40:01 +0000

Never been to New Orleans but you have a point. My guesses have taken us right by city sewage treatment plants and through railroad yards where rolling stock cars have gone to die.

By: PoodleGroomer

PoodleGroomer — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:55:44 +0000

I was following the directions I was getting on the phone and they were taking me miles out of my way. I saw that if I took the first exit, went 4 blocks and took a left I would be there directly. I found myself in a low income project district where they replaced windows with plywood because they stopped the bullets better. We took the long way home. Some parts of New Orleans destruction are not regretted.

By: hollyr57

hollyr57 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:32:28 +0000

I just found out that’s there’s no editing. Argggh.

By: hollyr57

hollyr57 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:30:06 +0000

What I like about this one is the no-nonsense statement “The EIFFEL TOWER gets modernized.” What a nice clear statement, almost Anglo Saxon in its brevity. But it’s quickly followed by a direction apologizing. I’ve never had a direction apologize to me even when it should have. Our GPS is constantly taking us the long way around and never once does it say “Sorry” or offer to pay for the extra gas (petrol). And whenever we use Mapquest, and it sends us 15 miles north to get us 11 miles west, it never admits it is wrong, much less apologizes. I want to live in a country where the directions occassionally admit they’re wrong.

By: hollyr57

hollyr57 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:28:33 +0000

What I like about this one is, first, the no-nonsense statement “The EIFFEL TOWER gets modernized.” What a nice clear statement, almost Anglo Saxon in it’s brevity. But it’s quickly followed by a direction apologizing. I’ve never had a direction apologize to me even when it should have. Our GPS is constantly taking us the long way around and never once does it say “Sorry” or offer to pay for the extra gas (petrol). And whenever we use Mapquest, and it sends us 15 miles north to get us 11 miles west, it never admits it is wrong, much less apologizes. I want to live in a country where the directions occassionally admit they’re wrong.

By: dr handle

dr handle — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:59:20 +0000

Rho Rho Rho your boat gently down the gene…

*I’ve been doctored*

By: dr handle

dr handle — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:55:44 +0000

The Eiffel Tower does Zaphod Beeblebrox?

By: Starsky

Starsky — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:41:02 +0000

Inconvenience is feminine? I should have guessed. The world makes much more sense now!

By: Camille

Camille — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:23:51 +0000

What’s awesome is how their French fails just as much as their English does. It’s “gêne” and not “gène”, just as Choubbi mentioned it.

By: giraffie

giraffie — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:19:40 +0000

I don’t appreciate you messing with my genes. =(