History's Famous Mistranslations, Part Two: Life on Mars, the Cold War, and FARTFULL

Ridiculous History

iHeartPodcasts

History, Society & Culture

4.3 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Did a mistranslation lead to theories of life on Mars? What exactly was Khrsuschev trying to say at that big U.N. meeting? Language is amazing -- and it's also pretty complicated. As a result, translation is often more an art than an exact science, and over the course of human history mistranslations have led to some astonishing, at-times dangerous, and often ridiculous results. In the second episode of this continuing series, Ben, Noel and Max dive into more bizarre historical mistranslations, from unfortunate car names to that time IKEA accused children of constantly farting, and so much more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Ridiculous History is a production of IHeart Radio. Welcome back to the show.
0:28.0	Ridiculous historians.
0:29.3	Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
0:32.0	Let's hear it for our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
0:35.1	Hello.
0:36.4	Yeah.
0:37.3	Yeah, the same in any language.
0:39.5	A rose is a rose as a rose until it is translated incorrectly.
0:45.5	Noel, you're Noel Brown, I've been Bowling.
0:47.4	Do you remember the last time we talked about famous mistranslations?
0:51.3	You know, I mentioned the last episode that I did not remember, but now I totally
0:55.1	remember because Jimmy Carter really stuck it to the entire nation of Poland by accident. And may I also
1:01.7	add that a rose even mistranslated. Still smells it sweet. There we are. Yes, we talked about
1:08.7	our buddy, Jimmy, uh, Pullen for you pulling for you uh former president carter uh as well as
1:14.4	uh pepsies hilarious errors uh trying to market Pepsi cola uh in Asia where it had to do with ghosts right
1:24.9	yeah it was like Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life.
1:28.5	Back to life.
1:29.4	Yeah.
1:29.8	Or bite the wax tadpole, things like that.
1:33.1	Check out our first famous mistranslations episode.
1:38.9	As we said, this is kind of a continuing series.
1:42.5	We've got way more funny, strange, downright, ridiculous mistranslations,
	...

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