Eating on the job

Thanks very much to Keith-Marc Bradford who emailed his story to peter at mytypohumour dot com.

I had a brochure to translate for a very high-class hotel in a chateau on the Loire.

'Don't worry about proof-reading it, they said, 'the owner speaks very good English and in any case, your translation will go straight for printing, untouched by human hand. They hadn't bargained for it being touched by computer, reset into narrow columns, and for the fact that the 'logical' French rules for hyphenation differ from the pragmatic English ones.

This is what they wrote:

'Vous pouvez déjeuner sur la terrace avec vue sur la vallée.'

And this is what I translated:

'You can have lunch on the terrace looking over the valley.'

But this is what was printed:

'You can have lunch on the terrace loo-
king over the valley.'

Collapse of their elegant image!

Keith-Marc Bradford
Excel Language Services
Lankerouet
F-22420 Plouzélambre
France