Lost in Translation: Misadventures in English

What a wonderful collection, gently poking fun at translations of English sentences which, whilst almost/technically accurate, completely ruin the meaning. You probably either enjoy this sort of humour or you don't. While some might see it as an arrogant and unfunny attempt to poke fun at people from other countries (whose language we couldn't even begin to speak), I completely disgaree. The introduction reminds us of the attitude we should take: we can have a giggle at the mistranslations of others whilst remaining humble of our own language abilities. Life's very short, and what's the point if you can't have a chuckle on the way? Oh yes, and have other reviewers have warned, do not read on public transport!!

Amazing book for all you linguist freaks out there, had me in stitches with its gems! The second in the series is as good.

This book popped up in my Amazon recommended list so I scanned the search inside pages and thought some of the lines were amusing but I decided to skip buying it thinking it to be a "let's slag off Jonnie Foreigner's poor English" type book but later I received it as a gift so I got it after all!

My preconceptions about this book seemed to be allayed initially as there plenty of quips to smile about, which I'm sure many others will find too, but in contrast to other reviewers, I found the laugh-out-loud quotes were quite few and far between.

I would have rated this book more highly if it remained as a collection of notices *in the public domain* in which hapless translators amusingly fall foul of the nuances of English, e.g. hotel notice: "If you cannot reach a fire exit, close the door and expose yourself at the window."

But instead, the latter pages descend into mocking individual's attempts *in the private domain* to communicate in English, e.g. a whole series of texts from an Italian boyfriend to his English girlfriend. Why the heck have they been printed! I'm pretty sure most of us have messed up those sorts of messages from time to time too, but they're meant to be private anyway.

I read the book from cover to cover which in hindsight may have been a bad thing as I agree with the reviewer who says the quotes tend to blur into one another after a while; it becomes tedious reading virtually the same notice from one hotel repeated in another. Also, as none of the quotes are referenced it does raise suspicions of whether all are even genuine...

This is a funny enough book but its not something that you're going to come back to over and over again which is what you really want for this type of coffee table book. A diverting book for a hour or so. I couldn't really recommend it to anyone.

I'm Spanish, and sometimes I've found funny translations in different tourist areas in Spain. One of the best is: "little toad to the iron" (found in a menu, it's a fish called 'fishing-frog', actually grilled). That would be a nice example to be included in this book.

English it's not my first language, but yet I had a fun time reading the different quotes of the book.

The main downside of the book it's that don't expect a novel here, it's just a collection of sentences clustered in different topics (travel, cooking, sings, etc).