You know, if the friend was going for the spirit of the quote, rather than a
transliteration, this might be a very nice job!

Eric



On Sun, Dec  5, 2010 12:55 PM, Robert Holmes <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>Here's another mistranslation that I came across on the BBC just yesterday.
The commentator was talking about Robert Burns's "Address to a
Haggis"—traditionally read at a
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burns_supper>—which starts:


>>
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>
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>
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>>Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
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>>Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
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>>The story goes that a gentleman in Germany wished to host a Burns Supper and
hence asked a friend in England for a translation of the poem. At which
point—and it's not clear why—someone translated it back from German to
English. The second line came out as:
>
>>
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>>"Mighty Führer of the sausage people"
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>>I do hope that's a true story :-)
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>-- R
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>>
>P.S. I heard this on a program called "QI", hosted by noted Twitterer Stephen
Fry. Worth finding!
>
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Eric Charles

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601


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