Sad to say, but the most interesting and innovative prams and strollers are owned by Europe. When researching said vehicles, a non-polyglot North American must rely on some kind of translator to interpret those languages the researcher failed to learn at school.
This can get quite amusing if you happen to hit the wrong button when requesting the translation. After entering Bebe Confort’s Italian site into the URL box on Babelfish, I accidentally hit the button for ‘translate from French to English’. (“Poussette” is French for pushchair/stroller; I was thinking in French, even though I was actually looking at Italian, probably because “poussette” actually appears in the Italian URL.) Here’s what turned up:
“Idiot you, the vita E bleated.” Got my comeuppance, didn’t I? (I’m keeping a much closer eye on my vitamins now, just in case.)
Part of the problem, of course, is that advertising is inherently idiomatic, and automatic translators can’t quite get that right. Here’s Babelfish’s translation if you push the correct ‘Italian to English’ button:
I like this one a lot better, but it’s not nearly as funny.
Here’s the original Italian, for those of you who read it:
In English, that sentence would better translate as “With you, life is beautiful.” But that phrase is a bit of a minefield itself, since, in English at least, it can’t help but recall the Roberto Benigni film about the Holocaust. Which is perhaps not exactly the association you want if you’re selling a stroller. Especially if you’re trying to sell it to people who might have found Benigni’s film offensive or insensitive.
I’m not sure it works even in Italian, cultural references aside, since it appears that the “you” referred to is the stroller, as in “With you, Loola, life is beautiful”. Even I don’t talk to my strollers like this — but hey, that’s advertising. I’m sure it looked good at the agency meeting. As it happens, the English site is completely different. It’s just as well.
Conflating several languages is, of course, problematic in general. For another example, check out this image of a power-mad infant.
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