this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 65 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 21 minutes ago) (4 children)

Long ago, I watched a youtube video of a girl singing a song from an anime that I'm assuming she'd translated herself in French. A bit bold because she didn't speak French. It was a nice try, but overall quite funny.

The part that really got me was a line about "a beautiful blooming spring" that she translated as "un beau ressort qui fleurit".

"Ressort" is the mecanical part that goes "boing". The season is "printemps".

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 41 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

This reminds me of a translation I saw for a spring themed song. Not the mechanical spring, the flowering one.

Japanese has three writing systems 漢字 which are essentially Chinese characters, the traditional kind rather than the simplified ones, ひらがな and カタカナ. They each complement one another and offer context, but sometimes you can also use different sets as a stylistic choice, which can deviate from general practise.

So there is this one line in the song

人ゴミを掻き分けては

Typically you’d write that first word with hiragana, 人ごみ, meaning crowd. ゴミ is a different word meaning rubbish, garbage, trash, litter, etc.

Whoever translated the song must’ve been decently new to the language, and did a valiant attempt, but they separated words out too much, and read 人ゴミ as two words, and 掻き分け again as two words.

  • 人 person/people
  • ゴミ garbage
  • 掻き arm stroke (like in swimming)
  • 分 part/portion

And thus translated it to something like “the people rummaged through the trash.”

  • 人ごみ crowd
  • 掻き分ける push aside/push through

So the actual meaning was roughly “I made my way through the crowd”

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

depending on the composition of the crowd the translation might hold up, e.g. trying to get through a crowd of tech CEO millionaires lol

[–] amorpheus@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago
[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 20 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

There was a story going around some time ago of someone who got a tattoo in Hebrew writing and asked for the word "butterfly" (🦋) but it instead read "butter fly" (🧈 🪰).

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

Haha, thanks for posting that! Great to see it again, and the others are also entertaining.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 3 points 6 hours ago

The latter is pretty funny. I know people that would ask for that intentionally.

[–] VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

What do you think of this... https://www.atlanticsuperstore.ca/fr/puces-beurre-de-miel/p/21365446_EA

Honey butter chips, translated to... Puces à beurre de miel.

lol chips being translated tu puces is ok if you are talking about micro chips being micro puces, but fried chips are croustilles.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I can't check the link directly, that store's site might be geolocked for some reason... But yeah, good one.

[–] VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 hours ago

I found them in a MAXI store close to me. I had to buy one to try, it was not too bad but I don't trust a company that can't even translate properly for my food.

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Wait was she doing the flcl theme?

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Not sure, but I don't think so... I think it might have been the opening from Ouran Host Club. IIRC that's what my sister was watching back then, and she showed me that video.

There's a line about beautiful spring in there, maybe it's not a perfect fit but obviously the person doing that started from an English translation, and there might have been some creative liberty here and there.