Bad Minhast Translations

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BAD MINHAST TRANSLATIONS!™ is all about translations from a source language to Minhast, or from Minhast to a target language. You will always get a BAD MINHAST TRANSLATION!™ for various reasons. Some are due to the usual sources of mistranslations, such as a bad command of the grammar and vocabulary of the foreign language to be translated. Other times the translator has a good understanding of the grammar and vocabulary, but gets tripped up on idiomatic expressions. Then there are instances where cultural differences factor in, and right in the middle of the text the Minhast translator will inject their explanation/commentary/wild speculations as to why the speakers of a foreign language would engage in such non-Minhast behaviour, such as why anyone would ask for directions when Google Maps is universally available.

In the expatriate Minhast communities, one should theoretically be able to get a good translation. However, depending on whom you ask, a translation prompt can spark a totally off-topic rant. Eventually, the person requesting the translation will find the translation, but it may be in a wall of text, or sandwiched somewhere in a two-hour recording involving diatribe of Flat Earth conspiracists that's only tangentially related to the translation prompt. Then there are translators that simply have anger-management issues, like a certain Salmon Speaker polyglot in Milan. This is why you'll always get...a BAD MINHAST TRANSLATION!™

Mistranslations from Filling in the Blanks

Getting Directions

  1. Original Text: "At the intersection, take a right at the traffic light and continue till you reach a stop sign. Make another right and you'll reach the cul-de-sac. The house will be on your left."
  2. Bad Minhast Translation: "Ambuntaħnessammāš yakuddataħnessāš: saryamtuttahammāš yaštahamannimāš niswaktahandūš! Wahēk matti Kambaħš warrā'e, hittazduatahuš! Kurasumhidaštitaħnessammāš asusnurūditaħnessāš!"
  3. Actual Meaning: "You will continue on your path and you will have a choice: you can stop, turn from your evil ways, and pursue righteousness! When you see it, stop and accept The Light that appears before you! Otherwise you will be trapped and left behind!"[1]

Mistranslations from Going Off On a Tangent

Flat Earth Conference Announcement (aka "The Raging YouTube Edgelord")

  1. Intro: In the expatriate Minhast communities, theoretically you should be able to get a good translation, as most are proficient in several languages. The problem is that oftentimes there’s a lot of editorializing sparked by the translation prompt. That’s because to be Minhast is to be argumentative, especially if it’s a City Speaker ranting about last night’s meeting at the Nefraħ[2], a Salmon Speaker complaining about salmon roe prices, or worst of all, a Dog Speaker from Hara Prefecture living in Rome as an edgelord of a popular YouTube channel. Which means it may take you hours to find the actual translation sandwiched somewhere in a wall of text, or through hours of recording. This is why they’re still considered as...a BAD MINHAST TRANSLATION™!
  2. Original Text: “The Flat Earthers are coming next week for a conference.”
  3. Bad Minhast Translation: “Suspaħtahankilmaksaš? Tasurgansartaharankilmasaš? Ruppasuħsahrak sut kurkaddambarammak intanurratikmaran kassugullikmankilmakš! Ayya, Murkastitahettanne! Takurkāl kirraħtupnaktaħmaništen! Addua wakkaħtam ikmizintakwaskiteradikman asunkirmikmannamā “Yafkuštarrat” naft, ni? Intakwaskiteradiknessamāš išpimarratikmeknessuštūrakkād! Hatā’ wammenehim terad tapkirgimattebbutnessuš! Kaħtamin gaggāradi asumeškekkenu yūtūbiki, bikirgimattebbutnessammaš paxnukturkalkurgekampiš! Wahēk yidikim Lubrianuwastaran raħkuyākašeknessuš! Wahēk Patriummin kazlemekkemmide paxnuteknessukilmaksaš - išpisaxtisattabeknessaš! Yūtupte ikšetaktamakakaru, matti Neyūn min Kirmast Pariski puħtagarragumabanaft duttiyemsiyekarabu wammīn! Wattaħ bakran husnaptaħmahuš? Eyyuhel ixtiduggiweriktittaħmu! Suttan, wakkamtarilkuhaknakkende? Suttan wabbakran kuhakna hittekkenuš…”[3]
    ...wa’ēlā eknašnašarat išpilaxmakkikman asunkirmikmannamā “Yafkuštarrat” naft venerdì hanikminessanimmāš kuhaknaytahini kirimtarikminessuš! Suttirrēruman…”[4]
  4. Actual Meaning: “Are you blind? Haven’t you seen the flyers posted everywhere? It’s gone viral on Facebook and all the other social media platforms! Oh, wait, you’re from America, I forgot you don’t have mobile devices. Did you know there’s a lot of 5G conspiracists among those Flat Earthers? I’ll kill them if they destroy the 5G towers downtown! I’m not going back to 4G! I’ve got 500K subscribers on YouTube, if I go 4G I’ll lose bandwidth, and then that pipsqueak from Lubriano is going to steal my subs! That means I’ll lose my patrons on Patreon - I can’t afford that! I’ve already been demonetized because some butt-hurt Osprey Speaker in Paris filed a false DMCA on me! But what does it matter to you? You still use dial-up to connect to AO-Hell! Oh, and what’s up with your stupid comtrail dingbats? In fact why do you always send us your lunatics…”

Screwing Up Idiomatic Expressions

A Teacher's Clothing

  1. Original Text: "My teacher is the one wearing the blue jacket.[5]"
  2. Bad Minhast Translation: "Rununkeknaft intkaran, asumuyyakyayrayan uwaššūmī"
  3. Actual Meaning:"My guide is depressed because he wears only one cloak."

Mistranslations from a Passive-Aggressive Translator

Little Red Riding Hood

  1. Intro: In theory, you should be able to get a good Minhast translation from the expatriate communities. An added bonus is that many dialects are represented. And if you’re pursuing a doctorate in Minhast dialects (like me), they provide an invaluable source of the Salmon Speaker dialect, a dialect that displays many conservative features. Such a dialect would be a boon to someone working on the diachronics of the language. Now the Salmon Speakers are renowned for other things besides their variety of Minhast, considered by many as a prestige dialect. The Salmon Speakers are also known for their generosity and hospitality, and their cuisine is acknowledged to be among the finest in the world. But if you hire them for translation work, be careful not to offend them. Unfortunately, the Salmon Speakers have a dark side, namely they have a vindictive streak and can get very passive aggressive. Unfortunately, my friend[6] in Texas found out the hard way after he contracted out work to a Salmon Speaker to translate popular Western fairy tales to sell in Minhay, and ended up getting…A BAD MINHAST TRANSLATION!™
  2. Source: Aiden, Charles (2020). Songs and Fairy Tales: The Art of Story Telling: Houston: Texas Wild West Publishing, 10-12. Translation by Našpuy min Ikkarem[7].
  3. Bad Minhast Translation:
  4. Actual Meaning:
Little Red Robbing Hood

First of all, don’t buy this stupid MAGABanana book. The publisher screws you over after they hire you for translation work, and these stories are pretty stupid anyway. I don’t even know why I signed up for this contract!

Oh yeah, the stupid story. Well, once upon a time there was a little girl named Little Red Robbing Hood. Wait, you ask, why would anyone cut the hood off their cloak? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having protective rain gear? How the f-[REDACTED]-k should I know? Maybe they needed to convert the rest of her cloak into more hoodies. Red hoodies. Very, very red hoodies. Cuz the Bananas like their MAGA headgear to be bright red. That’s why “Red” is part of her name. Cuz she’s another nut-job from one of those extremist hate groups.

Well, anyways, she comes to her grandmother’s house, except it’s really not. That’s because she’s got a horrible sense of direction and apparently has never heard of Google Maps. The house actually belongs to a bear family, two adults and their cub. Yeah, yeah, I know that bears live in dens, not in houses. It gets worse. The bears even have a dining room….with a dining table and chairs. Don’t ask me what the bears would be doing with furniture, this isn’t my story, this is a Banana story written by an escapee from the local loony bin. Well anyway they have porridge on the table - wait, what??? Porridge? As in those god-awful Dog Speaker canned baked beans-and-instant-oatmeal concoctions? Don’t bears eat salmon? Do you think I don’t know that? I’m a Salmon Speaker, of course I know that!

But that’s beside the point. So you’ve got these three bowls of porridge, a big bowl for the bear dad, beside it a smaller one for the bear mom, and the smallest bowl of porridge for their cub at the far end of the table. But wait, that porridge, didn’t they have to cook it? Yeah, and they used a stove to do it. Don’t ask me if it was gas or electric, I don’t know how things work in that stupid banana republic. For some reason, the bears decided to leave the house for a while. Don’t ask me why the bears went outside and let the food get cold, I have no f-[REDACTED]-g clue.

Well, anyway the little hoodlum gorges on the big bowl of porridge and complains that it’s too hot. Wait, how is it the bears left the house and the big bowl of porridge is still too hot? Maybe they nuked it in the microwave and it nearly got burnt. Maybe that’s why the bears left, to let the smoke clear out.

Then she goes to the next bowl of porridge and slurps it all down, then complains that it’s too cold. Well, if she didn’t want bad Dog Speaker porridge - I know that’s redundant, you don't need to say both “bad” and “Dog Speaker food” - she should have left while the going was still good! In any case, she goes to the last bowl and slurps it all up and says the temperature is ok. Did I tell you there’s silverware on the table, and she could have just used the spoons? Well let me ask you, when have you met a juvenile delinquent who was not a slob? And why do bears need spoons anyway? It’s not like they have opposable thumbs! But hey, I’m just the translator, and my contract said to translate this half-wit author’s idiotic story. I tried to tell him that no one in their right mind would believe this sh-[REDACTED]-y story, but he told me to shut up and translate it anyway[8].

So she went upstairs to the master bedroom where the father and mother bear slept. Yes, they have a bed upstairs, I know this is out of the friggin’ Twilight Zone where bears own real estate, buy luxury furniture, have gourmet kitchens to cook crappy Dog Speaker “food”, and have king-sized mattresses, as well as a Jacuzzi and potpourri in their master bedrooms.

Well, the break-in artist got snobby about the parent bears’ bed, cuz she’s some over-entitled Karen and so decided to break into the cub’s bedroom. Then she sat on his bed and thought it was the most comfortable bed she had ever encountered, so she crashed and slept there, making a big mess of the covers and pillows in the process.

Then the bear family returned and realized there was a break-in, and they told their cub to stay downstairs while they checked around. So they found Red Robbing Hoodlum, and the Banana got scared and jumped out of the window. The bears never saw her again.

Meanwhile, in the capital, there was a crisis. Apparently an egg dropped down from a ledge and got smashed. The king sent an army and ordered them to put the egg back together. Don’t ask me why anyone would want to reassemble a broken egg! They could have just thrown it in the trash and make a new batch of egg noodles, but the crazy king sent his army instead to have the medics try surgery on it. Why didn’t he send out the cooking staff? How the f-[REDACTED]-k should I know? Maybe they had budget cuts and had to lay off the kitchen staff so they wouldn’t have to make cuts in the military budget. And so without any royal chefs, they got the hair-brained idea to send a five-star general and the whole friggin’ army to deal with this national crisis.

Well, anyway the king became sad. That’s because the medics couldn’t glue the egg shell pieces together and stuff the egg yolk and egg whites back in. So they gave it a funeral[9] and shouted, “Humpty Dumpty”. I don’t know why the Bananas give eggs funerals, and don’t ask me what a “Humpty Dumpty” is, I’ve never encountered those words while I was studying English in uni. But this is a stupid story anyway, so what does it matter?

Anyways, after Red Robbing Hoodlum ran off and hid in the woods, she got disoriented again and entered another house. There was a grandmother wolf[10] and she was waiting for her grandcubs, but then out of the blue, the little MAGABanana swung open the door and scared the bejeezus out of the grandmother wolf. So much so the Banana almost gave the grandmother wolf a heart attack. Fortunately, her grandcubs came in the nick of time, saw what the Banana did to their poor grandmother, and they nearly mauled her to death. Then the grandmother recovered from her fright, told her grandcubs to step aside, and took a bite herself out of the little juvenile delinquent. Red Robbing MAGABanana then ran off and bumped into the saw-wielding murderer from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre[11]. Unfortunately, she escaped, but at least she swore never to break into the house of any animal living in the woods ever again.

And so they all lived happily ever after. The end.

So like I said, don’t buy this dumbass’s book, it’s the stupidest thing ever written on the planet and you'll just be wasting your money. The publishing company is just a money-laundering front and hires lunatics to write Flat Earth novels, COVID conspiracy newspapers, anti-vax magazines, and incoherent children’s stories. And never, never do business with a Banana!

Notes

  1. ^ This translation, from an aspiring sci-fi author, often watched videos on The Rapture to get material for his upcoming dystopian novel.
  2. ^ Modern Standard Minhast for "community center" in the expatriate communities. In the Minhast homeland, it usually refers to "hearth".
  3. ^ I cut out about two hours worth of his rant at this point, as it wasn’t pertinent at all to the translation prompt.“...so of course those insufferable Flat Earth hordes are arriving next Friday to spread their crackpot ideas! And while I’m at it...”
  4. ^ The translation (albeit somewhat modified) finally occurred at 3:51:14 of the recording, so I got rid of the rest of the speaker’s tirade at the 3:51:20 mark; the rest of the recording went on a tangent regarding the state of the US education system and other non-linguistic topics for another two hours.
  5. ^ When asked about his translation, the young City Speaker said that he had learned it when he used Google Translate for the popular song, "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues".
  6. ^ "Chuck" had contacted me and said that his book sales in Minhay were extremely poor, and asked me to look over the translation.
  7. ^ I realized I was in an awkward position after reading the name of the translator. I was Ikkarem's TA in Advanced English 301 at the University of Minhay at Aškuan. He was my best student, but I also remembered that he had a short fuse.
  8. ^ This appears to be what triggered Ikkarem, if Chuck did indeed say this.
  9. ^ I asked Ikkarem where he got the idea that there was a funeral. His answer was, "Well what else would a f-[REDACTED] medic do when their patient dies? Harvest the organs? Donate it to science? It's just a friggin' egg!"
  10. ^ I asked Ikkarem if he knew he was mixing up the fairy tales. He informed me that he was contracted to translate three stories, but since he received a paltry commission, and given that the author was an asshole, he decided to economize and mash the three stories into one.
  11. ^ While I was talking to Ikkarem about the book, I informed him that Red Riding Hood met an axman, and that power saws didn't exist in those days. Then he told me that didn't make sense since Bananas are too lazy not to use electric and fuel-powered tools. I decided to leave well enough alone.
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