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+--- Thread: Odd Assumptions and Mistranslations (/thread-9160.html)
Odd Assumptions and Mistranslations - Taishi - 2012-03-10
Hello, long time lurker here, figured it was time for me to unburrow and step into the light with this thread.
Have you had times where you encountered a word you didn't know but you felt fairly certain that you could guess the meaning of. Then you find out - when you look it up - that your guess was way off, and the result was in hindsight quite amusing.
It might be a bit of a overspecific scenario, but I'd like to hear your experiences with similar situations, here's mine:
While looking through the lyrics of a song a while back, I encountered the word イヤホン. At the time of course, I didn't know it's meaning, which is earphone or headphone. However, the way I read it to myself was 嫌本 which I assumed referred to a book of - shall we say - questionably appropriate content. 嫌 for the sound invariably used by females in animes when they find themselves in embarrassing situations, and 本 for book obviously. In hindsight - and at the time itself - I found this mistranslation by myself hilarious
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Odd Assumptions and Mistranslations - EnjukuBlack - 2012-03-10
I've experienced this before many times. It's been a while, though, so I can't remember an exact example from my own experience.
I do remember a friend, though, who thought of めんどくさい as "his めんど stinks!"
