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by once_inc 456 days ago
I've had a similar experience where Dutch surnames were translated from English to Dutch by Excel for some reason. Since many Dutchman have a surname prefixed with the Dutch word "van" (which means "of") Excel dutifully translated it to "Busje", which meant that many of our clients suddenly were called "Lieke Busje Lexmond" or "Vincent Busje Gogh".

It got a chuckle from our marketing department which caught the error before badges were printed for the very high-profile event we had planned for the next day.

4 comments

My favourite part of the Dutch language is how it adds the -je diminutive to other words to make new words. A van? That’s just like a cute baby bus.
This made me wonder what a poffert is, if a poffertje is a cute baby version of them. So I Googled it. Sure enough, it's a cake.
That would be a poffer, as the interstitial t is added to words ending in r when forming the diminutive.

And no, I didn't know what a poffer was either. :)

Looking it up a poffer is a kind of hat, and a poffert is a kind of cake. "Poffert" is definitely an odd word though.
That would be a "puffer" or light, fluffy cake.
French localisation of OnlyFans used to translate the word 'tip' (quite essential to the OF experience) both as 'bout', 'tip' in the sense of 'end', and as 'astuce', 'tip' in the sense of 'piece of advice'.
Must've been high profile indeed if both Vincent van Gogh and Lieke van Lexmond were there
A colleague of mine got a Christmas card from Microsoft adressed to "New Year's Eve"...

Hi Silvester!