On 2005-08-04, I watched an episode of the TV-show "Forensic Detectives" on Discovery Channel. As the channel is one of my favourites I felt my Spidermannish what-the-hell-senses tingling as I heard the narrator say "prostitute" while the translator wrote "hora" (which is Swedish slang meaning "whore"). The translator used this quite a few times, and then switched to another maladjusted word. While the correct word would have been "drogmissbrukare", the translator opted for "knarkare", upon hearing "drug-addict"; "knarkare" means "junkie". So, whores and junkies, and not prostitutes and drug-addicts. What a gyp.
I e-mailed Discovery Channel Europe and received a personal reply merely six days later, by a spokesperson who says they'll look into the event. I say they'll be hearing from me should this sorry excuse for a translator ever work like that again! I'll come down on the beeyatch like nizzle, fo shizzle. Abusing the Queen's English is one thing, but opting to interpret a language is not the same as opting to translate.
Swedes have come across this in the past. Now that LOTR-ophilia is gone and away, the one thing that's good about it is that Swedes now have (what I've heard is) a quite decent translation of the LOTR-books. The first, until this new one, translation was done by åke Ohlmarks, a person who did not believe a translator's only work should be merely translation, but interpretation as well. Said and done, he changed a few names of a few cities, and made the powerful, female characters of the books into men. Into men. Other trifles are effulgent, according to linguists, but the mentioned sexist remark is enough for me. åhlmarks will probably say his version is the best so far, but hear me out: J.R.R. Tolkien, the guy who wrote LOTR, actually knew Swedish. He read the translation in question, and hated it, so there you go. Whassup, åhlmarks, you crazy person!
It all reminds me of the old saying about music journalists, that they're all failed musicians with a minority complex. Or, as Frank Zappa once said: Rock journalism is people who can't write, preparing stories based on interviews with people who can't talk, in order to amuse people who can't read".