Why do we need professional translators? In short, because of costly consequences of not having them employed. I wanted to show few examples when trusting bilingual persons ended up in massive losses, embarrassment and people being seriously hurt.

BUSINESS

In business keeping the cost appropriately down matters. There are some times situations when you really need to engage a specialist and pay him his/hers rates instead of relying on you own knowledge even if you are a bilingual person. This can be demonstrated by following examples:

• Braniff airlines aimed to promote its leather seats by translating its “fly in leather” slogan as fly “en cuero,” which sounds like Spanish slang for “fly naked.”

• When KFC entered the Chinese market, their “Finger-lickin’ good” slogan was translated into “Eat your fingers off.”

• The “Got Milk” tag line used in the California Milk Processor Board’s ad campaign was translated into Spanish as “Are you lactating?”

• When translated into Arabic, the Jolly Green Giant became the “Intimidating Green Ogre.”

• HSBC’s now legendary 1999 “Assume nothing” slogan was mistranslated—in some languages–as “Do nothing.”

Funny? Not that much for those leading the above campaigns. Something as small as a work lead to a millions of pounds and dollars in costs and damage of the brand. Some companies can rebound from those bloopers however HSBC had to invest additional 10 mln USD to rebrand to "the world's private bank" from the infamous "do nothing". 

POLICE AND LAW

The consequences of the mistranslation of legal documents are numerous and the legal effects of mistranslations have been going on for ages. 

The confusing treaties

In 1851, the Sultanate of Sulu in the Philippines and Spain signed a peace treaty. The Spaniards believed that the agreement meant that the Sultanate accepted Spain’s sovereignty. The Sultanate thought it was a peace treaty. In 1878, the Sultanate again signed a treaty with the British commercial syndicate. While the Sultanate agreed to a rental, the English version stated that it was a sale.

Facebook machine translation error

A Palestinian man has been arrested after Facebook artificial translator translated "Good morning" to "Attack them". The whole story has been described  in The Guardian and led to few red faces at Facebook. The media giant apologised for the mistake reminding all of us that artificial intelligence is still not as good as a human one and language is still too complex for the machine to handle the every day life.

MEDICAL

Double mastectomy case

The case of a British expat who received a double mastectomy procedure after translation mix up in Spain was reported by Mail Online . Ms Teresa Tarry sued the hospital for negligence after Spanish doctors understood that her sister and mother had a history of breast cancer. She sued the hospital for 600000 Euros for negligence.

Botched knee replacement surgeries 

The Journal of Specialized Translation described cases of knee replacement that had to be repeated due to the fact that the vocabulary from the source label “non-modular cemented” was incorrectly translated as “non-cemented” or “without cement.”  47 people who had a surgery had to undergo another procedure.

SUMMARY

Using own knowledge of the language or letting unqualified people, including minors, to fill in the role of an interpreter is not a good idea to say the least. Yet still a lot of private people, organisations and businesses employ this strategy. I can only say that it will cost more money than paying a qualified translator or interpreter and will stop driving professionals from the unreasonable silly market place.