Translation mistakes may have various consequences, some funny and unusual, such as thinking that nothing is certain except death and taxicabs, some more serious, such as the break of the prostheses we started using just a month ago and some more annoying, such as not being able to properly enjoy an historical book. In order to show you how important (correct) translation is nowadays, we give you some examples:

(Expresso newspaper, 3^rd March 2012)

History Channel made a mistake translating a famous Benjamin Franklin quote “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. The word “taxes” was translated as “taxis”, which means taxicabs. The result? We went from one quote where nothing was said to be certain except death and taxes to a quote where nothing is said to be certain except death and taxicabs.

(JN newspaper, 24^th August 2008)

47 patients submitted to surgery in the Sankt-Hedwig hospital in Berlin were victims of a literary translation mistake. The translated label in their prostheses stated the addition of cement was not needed. However, the original English label stated that the addition of cement was indeed needed. Result: the prostheses broke some time after.

(Público newspaper, 3^rd December 2010)

The book “Rise and Fall of Communism”, by Archie Brown, suffers profound changes in the Portuguese translation. However, those changes make the book harder to read. You are required to reread some sentences over and over in order for them to make sense. There are also lots of other mistakes, of which the most whopping is perhaps the fact that Rosa Luxemburg is said to be a man. Moreover, the text is badly revised, as you constantly encounter mistakes and even some historical names are spelled with lowercase letters.