Categories: Funny

Turkish to English Translation Nightmares

When you need to translate something, it usually requires more than looking up those words in a dictionary, as there are many meanings to the same word. Many examples you’ll find here are based on this error. Others are more deviant. Enjoy!

iskender is a kind of kebab. Obviously it has nothing to do with the Great Alexander, except that his name is Buyuk Iskender in Turkish.
Likewise Döner or Gyro should not be translated as “returns”. But literally döner also means “he/she will return”
In Turkish dil = tongue or language. But the name of a cheese cannot be translated as either of these..
Sac means both hair and “metal thin plate” , they picked the wrong one 🙂
Beautiful translation altogether 🙂 No idea why they added the “please don’t move” at the end..

Corn is translated as “Misir” in Turkish. Misir means both corn and Egypt. They picked the wrong one.

Anali means “with mother” – does not mean anal 🙂
Çemen sounds bad, but it’s some kinda tomato dip.
This is an “advanced failure.” The French word “Au gratin” is first wrongly written as “öğreten”.
Then it is directly translated as “teaches” because “öğreten” means “the one that teaches” 🙂
AŞ means Food in the old Turkish. AŞI means either “its food” or “vaccine”. Guess what they did here 🙂
Another classic. “Çevirme” can either be translated as “Rotisserie” or “Translation”.. Guess which one they picked.
Bonus: Lovely spelling of Chicken.
“Topla” means two things in Turkish: Either “With a Ball” or “Turn the steering whell so it’s straight”.. 🙂
This one relies on the fact that “it” means either “dog” or “push”. So, “itiniz” means either “your dog”, or the push verb in the polite “you” form.
This disaster made it to Ellen’s program. “Elisi” means handcrafts.. Not handjob obviously 🙂 All the other typos enhance this poster.
“Mantar” here is a floating marker in the sea, usually made from cork in the old days. But they translated as “Cork” which is the same word in Turkish.
Likewise Duba is a floating marker, usually plastic or metal. which became Dubai for some unknown reason 🙂
Ali Nazik is a name.. So, translating Nazik makes no sense 🙂
Multiple beauties here: “YAŞ” can be either Age or “Wet” in Turkish.
Ekler comes from Eclaires in French. However you can’t double-translate it without losing something.
“Ekler” in Turkish means “Additions” 🙂 So you should not re-translate it to English
Another baffling translation: OCAK is either the month of January or means “Oven/Stove/Furnace”.
Instead of “Prices” we see “Pieces”.. Meh, close enough 🙂
“life bagel” is however nicer.. the life jacket that’s found on boats is “can simidi” in Turkish. Simit is also a bagel 🙂
Instead of just writing “Destination: Ankara” they wrote a whole sentence 🙂
Kaymak is this very thick cream. The verb “to slide” can also be translated as “kaymak” to Turkish 🙂

This time we translate from Russian..
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