Many of you will have seen some funny translation errors… mainly by far eastern countries. In fact, there are a whole swathe of them on the Internet, from road signs to menus and even shop names.

Now Spain has fallen victim to such a mistranslation; all down to good old Google Translate.
The word in question is grelo (or Rapini to most English speaking countries), which, although not that popular down here in the south, the Galicians go mad for the stuff. It’s basically a leafy green vegetable that sort of resembles broccoli, although it’s mainly the leaves that are eaten and when cooked looks a bit like spinach.

Unfortunately, Google managed to translate grelo to clitoris… the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the translation was concerning a grelo festival in the Galician town of As Pontes. You can imagine the shock when they read an official announcement of their proud festival which welcomed one and all to a “clitoris festival.”

It got worse, “The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine. Since 1981 the festival has made the clitoris one of the star products of its local gastronomy,” the announcement proudly declared.

Nothing to get in a flap about, you may think, however, Montserrat García, a spokesperson for the town said, “It was a quite a surprise, at first we didn’t believe what we were seeing.”
It didn’t help that the festival, which is held every February was announcing that there would a prize this year for the best tasting clitoris.

The strangest thing about the whole episode is that the announcement was on the town’s official website for months, until someone actually noticed the error late last week! It wasn’t until then that they got in a flap.

Anyway, the error has been rubbed out and As Pontes, population 11,000 will continue towards their festival a little wiser and in future, perhaps, a little more careful… but… at least they can be thankful they weren’t having a bean festival!

 

news, Spain