Worst translations: 'Paul is dead' meatballs and other brilliant mistakes

Guests dining at the Erbil International Hotel in northern Iraq were invited to help themselves to a heaty dish of "Paul is dead", thanks to a bizarre translation error.

The label, spotted by Twitter user Hend Amry, was placed in front of a dish of meatballs in the luxury Kurdistan hotel.

However, Arabic speaker Amry was able to shed some light on the convoluted linguistic explanation for the misunderstanding.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Amry shared another image of a well-meaning translation gone wrong, this one hanging above a poultry butcher:

The mix-up inspired other multilingual tweeters to share their own favourite facepalm translation moments.

There was this classic cross-border bungle, when Swansea council officials mistook a Welsh translator's automated out-of-office email for the translation they were after.

The result? A bilingual road sign which told English speakers that lorries were prohibited and Welsh speakers: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".

And then there was the time the client wanted a warning sign on a tanker to say "No smoking" in Arabic - and the translator obliged, oh-so-literally:

Other inspired contributions included an unusual suggested method of consuming dessert:

As well as a menu item you definitely wouldn't want to order for your first meeting with the in-laws:

Some of the mistakes weren't only a linguistic headache, they were downright sinister:

While others should definitely be fixed, pronto: