Thursday, July 14, 2016

How a Portuguese-to-English Phrasebook Became a Cult Comedy Sensation

How a Portuguese-to-English Phrasebook Became a Cult Comedy Sensation: It is presumed that Carolino wrote the book through the aid of a Portuguese-to-French dictionary and a French-to-English dictionary, using the former for an initial translation of a word or phrase from Portuguese, and the latter to convert it from French into English. The result, of course, is a mishmash of cloudy gibberish.

1 comment:

Don Coffin said...

I wonder what you'd get today if you took some expressions in Portuguese (or German, or French or Italian...) and ran them through a translation website. Here's one from German: Ohne fiend is das nur eine halbe welt
To English: Without the fiend is only half a world
(Google translate)

The German is from a book by Friedrich Durrenmatt that I read in my college German class. It actually translates to "Without enemies, this is only a half a world."