That's not the only place. In one of my 4th year French textbooks [the one claw-delivered by Dinosaur Express], in an excerpted Camus essay, the footnote translated a phrase as "Go to hell." I found out the embarrassing way it actually meant "Scr3w you." :(
This puts me in mind of a similar event. A friend was teaching a very elementary Spanish conversation class at the local community college. I took one semester of it, thinking I'd get some grammar out of it. Anyway, one exercise involved the conversation bubble of the Family Circle cartoon was erased. Mom was shaking her finger at Little Jeffy. We were supposed to write in what Mom could be saying.
I had no problem at all with this, because in Honduras the word "hodido" means rascal, scalliwag, and is slang, but in no way vulgar. My mother-in-law, who is a very proper person, uses it. So, it was the perfect word. Anyway, I wrote, "Que hodido, Jeffy!" Well, the teacher was walking around looking at people's work. When she got to me, I heard a big intake of breath and "Oh, my God, NO! You can't use that word!!" Puzzled, I looked up and asked why not, since it wasn't vulgar...she advised me that I had just had Mom calling Little Jeffy a "m*ther-f*..." I am very careful now when using Honduran slang around Mexicans...
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Date: 2006-09-18 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 05:06 pm (UTC)I had no problem at all with this, because in Honduras the word "hodido" means rascal, scalliwag, and is slang, but in no way vulgar. My mother-in-law, who is a very proper person, uses it. So, it was the perfect word. Anyway, I wrote, "Que hodido, Jeffy!" Well, the teacher was walking around looking at people's work. When she got to me, I heard a big intake of breath and "Oh, my God, NO! You can't use that word!!" Puzzled, I looked up and asked why not, since it wasn't vulgar...she advised me that I had just had Mom calling Little Jeffy a "m*ther-f*..." I am very careful now when using Honduran slang around Mexicans...
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Date: 2006-09-28 02:07 am (UTC)