English as She Is Spoke - A Classic Comic Phrasebook of Translation Gone Wrong - Softcover

Fonseca, Jose De; Pedro, Carolino

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617204536 ISBN 13: 9781617204531

Publisher: SMK Books, 2011

Synopsis

this book was intended as a Portuguese-English conversational guide or phrase book, but is regarded as a classic source of unintentional humour, as the given English translations are generally completely incoherent. The humour appears to be a result of dictionary-aided literal translation, which causes many idiomatic expressions to be translated wildly inappropriately. Mark Twain said of English as She Is Spoke that "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect.

About this title

About the Author

José da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino were nineteenth-century Portuguese writers associated with language manuals, dictionaries, and educational works. Their names became permanently linked with English as She Is Spoke, one of the most famous examples of comic mistranslation in literary history.The work appears to have been produced as a Portuguese-English phrasebook without adequate knowledge of English, possibly through reliance on a Portuguese-French phrasebook and a French-English dictionary. Whatever the exact process, the result was a book whose practical purpose failed spectacularly while its comic value proved enduring. The strange literal renderings, malformed idioms, and absurd conversational examples gave the volume a second life as a classic of unintentional humor.Today English as She Is Spoke is remembered less as a language manual than as a monument to the hazards of translation and the comedy of linguistic overconfidence. Fonseca and Carolino's association with the book places them in the history of literary curiosities: works whose reputation rests not on polished intention, but on the accidental creation of something memorable, strange, and enduringly funny.

Edition details

• Publisher: SMK Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1617204536
• ISBN 13: 9781617204531
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 40