Here are some examples of “disastrous translations” I’ve seen which made me laugh (if not I might have to cry). They show just what can happen in a translation!

With tongue firmly in cheek, I suggest you keep your eyes open to spot the difference in quality between the translations you can see around you.

And don’t forget to go to someone who knows what they’re doing for your translations.

 Rubbish container = Container von Müll. Whoa there... it should be "Müllcontainer" – “Container von Müll” sounds to a German speaker like an aristocratic title, along the lines of Baron von Münchhausen.

Seen at the left luggage office in the Gare de l’Est, the famous railway station in Paris. In French it actually asks you to lay your luggage down flat to pass through the scanner. While the English is vague, to say the least, the Spanish version is even more confusing, telling travellers to put their luggage on a dinner plate...

German speakers are told to put their bags "in Gericht", which means "in the law court" (!!!). Somebody tried to translate this sign using a dictionary, with unfortunate results:

"Plat" in French, apart from meaning "flat", also means plate or dish, which can translate into German as "Gericht". However, "Gericht" in this context also means “law court”, and this is why German readers are told in this case to put their luggage in court rather than flat on the belt.

Just to give an idea of how wide of the mark it was, a proper translation into German would have been "Aus Sicherheitsgründen bitte Ihr Gepäck flach hinlegen."

This Spanish cheese bought in Germany was delicious, but the translation was so bad that no German would know what they were eating:

Hergestellig should be "hergestellt" (made of)
Vollmilk should be Vollmilch
Kur-, Ziegen- and Schafsmilk should be Kuh-, Ziegen- und Schafsmilch
(Kurmilch, literally "spa milk" instead of "cow’s milk" – odd!)

Also, for some strange reason the German word “Milch” was replaced with the English word “Milk”.

The Spanish version of this sign is more mistake than translation – apparently, for example, nobody who has a back should go on it, which rules out most of us.

A real gem!

Spotted by Núria Bonet (www.nuriabonet.com) in La Maquinista shopping centre in Barcelona. An example of how Catalan is a rather different language from Spanish - and how not everybody realises this.

They're selling tea towels - "paños de cocina" in Spanish, so they've just put the most similar words in Catalan: "panys de cuina".

Unfortunately, "pany" doesn't mean the same as "paño", so in fact the Catalan version means they appear to be selling "kitchen locks", which opens up an intriguing range of possibilities. Good job there's a pile of tea towels behind the sign...