Off topic: How not to win friends and influence people Thread poster: Charles Ek
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Charles Ek 
United States
Local time: 03:14
Member (2009)
Norwegian to English
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just made a showy presentation to her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, of a mistranslated "Reset" button. The intent was to signal a new basis for bilateral relations between the two countries. Instead of "Reset," the button (apparently) said in Russian, "Overcharged". To compound the error, she's quoted as saying, "We worked hard to... See more Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just made a showy presentation to her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, of a mistranslated "Reset" button. The intent was to signal a new basis for bilateral relations between the two countries. Instead of "Reset," the button (apparently) said in Russian, "Overcharged". To compound the error, she's quoted as saying, "We worked hard to get the right Russian word."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/world/europe/07diplo.html?hp
As someone who doesn't speak Russian, I'd be interested to see any explanations, or even speculations, from English to Russian translators on how the error was made. ▲ Collapse
| | | | sarandor
United States
Local time: 04:14
English to Russian
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| Peregruzka - perezagruzka | Mar 7, 2009 |
Instead of 'perezagruzka' (reset), they used 'peregruzka' (can be translated as 'overcharge' or 'overload'). Just two letters made all the difference. Someone at the State Department must be very embarassed right now.
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:14
Russian to English
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In memoriam | Something else she got wrong | Mar 7, 2009 |
“You got it wrong,” he replied, explaining that the Americans had come up with the Russian word for overcharged.
“We won’t let you do that to us,” she said quickly, with a full-throated laugh.
"Перегрузка" has nothing to do with overcharging in the sense of asking an excessive price for something.
| | | | Latin_Hellas (X)
United States
Local time: 10:14
Italian to English
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| Excessively price and overinflated | Mar 7, 2009 |
What is excessively priced is US education (not to mention real estate, medical care, etc.) and, most of all I would say, overinflated is the hubris of the US ruling class.
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Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 11:14
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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| Why not "Reset" | Mar 8, 2009 |
Spelled in cyrillic, it would mean the same as reset in English. Or am I too simplistic?
Regards
Heinrich
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