Winos, Doggy Style and Strange Furious Drinks: Lost in Translation in Croatia

Google Translate, the enemy of the state.

I had honestly thought about ending this series as I was rapidly running out of material, but since the Croatian media took a liking to the idea of me making sarcastic remarks about cocks and Dalmatian furniture, I thought I’d try and stretch my humour-laced, semi-intellectual negativity out a bit more. If you’d like to read the other entries in this series, which involve uplifting topics like bowel problems, viral disease, free hand jobs, cheap bitches, the Pope and a burek named desire, click here, here, here and here.

Robert M. Grant once said that there can never be an absolutely final translation, and as someone who does quite a lot of translation work for a living, I can safely say that he was right in his belief.

Thanks to wonderful corners of the Internet filled with Grammar Nazis like myself, such as this and this, I’ve been able to scrape together a few more linguistic beauties.

We’ve had pen keks, pen kejks, penceks (which is frighteningly close to pendrek, which is a police night stick), we now have panchakes. Whatever this culinary wonder may be (and yes, I am being sarcastic), at least your subsequent obesity and clogged aorta will come cheap.

This wouldn’t be wrong if it had an extra G, but even then, you might get the wrong type of customer walking through the door. Zagreb? Amsterdam? Is there a difference?

This sign may not actually be wrong, it’s open to discussion. It may simply be suggesting that anyone who follows that beautifully painted arrow has an alcohol problem that they might want to talk to someone about. If anything, it’s caring, or insulting… You decide!

Ah, Jana, undoubtedly one of the most well known Croatian companies. It seems that loving that self which is them isn’t having that much of an effect on the water company. This is the problem with ”direct” translation, it doesn’t work. There can never truly be a direct translation that makes perfect sense because translation is much more than being about words, entire sentences can be and often are constructed in an entirely different manner. To be correctly ”picked up” by an English speaking brain, this should read: ”Good things happen only when we accept who (or what) we are, and feel love towards ourselves”. In any case, nice message, Jana.

There have always been very many stray felines wandering around Croatia’s coastal cities, particularly where I live in Dubrovnik. It wasn’t going to be long before some entrepreneurial mind saw a niche in the market and a golden business opportunity.

Oh God. How many ways can one person possibly misspell ”cheese”. Not to mention the word pomfrit, which as I mentioned in the last entry of Lost in Translation, seems to be constantly evolving. We’ve gone from pomfrit to pomfi and now to pomfirt, which sounds almost like a racial slur against the Brits. Let me not even begin on the fact that the letter Y doesn’t even exist in the Croatian alphabet and that this should have said ”meni” (menu).

Konzum. One of Agrokor’s more brutal victims. It seems that it isn’t just the chain of stores themselves that have suffered, so have their language skills. There is this thing called recycling and you can do your bit to save what is clearly an already doomed planet by returning your plastic bottles that were formerly full of sickness inducing chemicals and dangerously high levels of sugar to the store for cash. Konzum do it, not that anyone could ever possibly tell from this sign as the Croatian isn’t very good either. Just keep whatever receipt you were given.

Jana strikes again! This one is for all the Nihilists out there. What this should say is that in every wall, there IS a door. Not that every wall is a door. Could be quite confusing to both those experiencing existential crises and those studying architecture.

This one, judging from the prices which seem to be written in BAM (Bosnian marks), is obviously from some far corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It would appear that this wonderful menu that is selling an extremely interesting cock in red soda isn’t actually in Croatia, that being said, Croatian language is being used and there ‘aint nothing like cock in red soda, especially at those prices. What this actually means of course, is meatballs (often written as mesne okruglice in Croatian, but sometimes as ćufte or ćufte od mesa) and by red soda, it of course means sauce (umak), and not some sort of carbonated drink.

Don’t get on the wrong side of these drinks, they have a temper. Strana žestoka (alkoholna) pića are of course not strange furious drinks, but strong foreign drinks, such as Jack Daniels, etc. In any case, don’t drink too many or you too may literally come across as strange and furious.

Being a guest of the local toilet paper is an esteemed honour. What we were going for here is the sending of the message that if you’re buying drinks in this ”local” (bar, cafe, etc), then the toilet paper for the toilet can be sought at the bar. Quite bizarre, and it does seem somewhat easier to simply keep it IN the bathroom, but whatever. Remember what I said about there being no such thing as a direct translation? Here is one example of direct translation through Google Translate at work.

Ledies first. Obviously whoever designed this has Northern English roots.

If you hadn’t seen them running around and creating a mess in the Dalmatian countryside, you can see them up close on your plate. The German (wildschwein) is correct, the English is somewhat, well… extended. Wild boar is an excellent meal but I’m not sure how we arrived to ”board”. In Croatian, this would be a divlja daska, not a daily sight for sure.

Once again we have another variation of the Croatian word ”prilozi” which loosely translates as extras for a meal. As mentioned in the last Lost in Translation article, this irritating little word has many different potential English translations, from attachments to additions to the rather bizarre ”adverbs”, none of which (apart from adverbs, which I have no idea how they arrived to), are technically incorrect, but contributions tends to mean something being given in good will or for free in English, so this restaurant might well have some English speakers wondering why they’re paying, God forbid, for their chutney.

Well, it does get hot in summer.

Parking and its many spellings can be found up and down the Croatian coast, this appears to be a cave drawing of a much older version of the word as we know it today.