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Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Great moments in autotranslation

Al Arabiya (Arabic) has an article about the first Miss Palestine pageant, to be held on December 26 (with 26 of the 58 contestants coming from Israel.)

One autotranslated paragraph quotes an official from the pageant saying, "[It is] difficult to convince many of this idea, and [there is] the perennial question about whether the contestants will take part in sea bass or not." And [the] answer [is] "Of course, the contestants will not be used for sea bass, because this completely contravenes the nature of the traditional Palestinian society."

Apparently, in Arabic, the word for "sea bass" is the same as "swimsuit."