h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We've all been there. Being bilingual in a situation where others are not, and don't get the joke. But this time, they've hit Hollywood where it lives.

As reported with delight by Stephen Colbert on last night's Late Show, the 'Homeland' debacle:

The action show is notorious for misrepresenting life in the Middle East - portraying an upscale shopping street in Beirut as a slum, etc, etc. This time, they filmed a 'Syrian refugee camp'. The location was on the outskirts of Berlin, where clever artists live. Clever artists who were hired to paint Arabic graffiti on the walls of the camp, thus adding verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. They wrote, 'Homeland is racist.' They also wrote 'Homeland is a watermelon', which is funnier in Arabic. The set designers failed to notice because...surprise, they didn't read Arabic.

Much amusement has resulted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlM0G5X7nqI

People strolling through the Plaka in Athens used to chuckle over the exchange-student-designed t-shirts. And then there was the great Dan Pita movie, 'The Prophet, the Gold, and the Transylvanians', with dialogue courtesy of visiting Fulbright scholars. Dig this clip from the Romanian classic Western:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNj8EmvHAZA

Of course, there are the tourists who got drunk one night and woke up with a rude Chinese tattoo...or one drawn from the takeaway menu...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2zl1tWaKOo

The moral is: Hire decent translators with a sense of ethics. And don't rely on Hungarian phrasebooks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQJHHf3i1o

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34536434

we got it on our news
not watched the series etc though