For the last few days, my work time has consisted of testing hospital incontinence devices that look like inflatable donuts attached to a garden hose.  One test involves determining how much force it takes to remove one from a fake butt and today the housekeeper asked me what the item was for.  The housekeeper speaks very little English and I speak enough Spanish to be dangerous so I try my best.  The conversation translated looked like this:

Him: What’s that for?
Me: People who are in hospitals.
Him: What kind of people?
Me: People who are very sick.
Him: Oh, does everyone use one?
Me: No, *thinks about how to say what it does with my meager Spanish* it is for people with broken asses.
Him: *look of horror* I understand.

Just in case you need to know, “Sirve para las personas con culos rotos” roughly means “it is for people with broken asses.”  I should work for the UN.

I cleaned out a dusty closet with a floor covered in drop-down ceiling pieces and grabbed a broom from housekeeping. After sweeping I tried returning it but a member of housekeeping was in the storage area and gave me a quizzical look. So, I did what I always do in these cases: I butcher the language of Cervantes.

In Spanish: Yo necesitaba una escoba para poder cortar el piso de las heces de techo.
In English: I needed your broom so I could mow the floor of ceiling feces.

I cleaned out a dusty closet with a floor covered in drop-down ceiling pieces and grabbed a broom from housekeeping. After sweeping I tried returning it but a member of housekeeping was in the storage area and gave me a quizzical look. So, I did what I always do in these cases: I butcher the language of Cervantes.

In Spanish: Yo necesitaba una escoba para poder cortar el piso de las heces de techo.
In English: I needed your broom so I could mow the floor of ceiling feces.

I normally don’t revel in the failed translations of others having butchered a number of languages, but this was simply too good.  Lets see if the topic gets my own blog banned by my work’s IT guys.  Anyway, Wired.com, the intrepid reporters they are, covered a Japanese Entertainment…. yes, Entertainment convention and covered such important topics as the Raelians views on human rights.  One of the vendors had a very…. advanced product touted because of its awesome English site.  It can only be described as an Epic Fail for Babelfish (As an aside, holy shit, altavista still exists).  Want a fake marriage hole for a semi-medical purpose made by a stubborn craftsman?  Check it out!  Please note that some features are silicone while others are silicon, owww.

I ran into a hispanic member of housekeeping today that I hadn’t seem in a year or two and was reminded of one of my greatest moments of translingual butchery:  I was attempting to tell him to use a specific power outlet to attach the floor buffer as it overloaded the circuit and shut down down the computer on the line, after a few attempts, this is what I said translated back into English from Spanish “When you attack the floor with bee shit, do not use this electricity faucet”.