sumerian is the oldest written language dating back to 3100 bce language itself
is believed to have started somewhere between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years
ago when humans developed the capacity to speak using what we understand today
as the voice box and since that time it's estimated humans have come up with an estimated
31 000 languages around 6000 of them are still in existence today and with that many languages
it's not hard to imagine translations from one language to another don't always go as planned
number 10 icelandic dracula is basically fanfic bram stoker's dracula is one of the most famous
novels of all time and has never been out of print since its publication in 1897. it's also
been translated into 30 languages in that time so all people around the world can enjoy it
the most noteworthy translation dates back to 1901 when valdemar asmundsen translated it into
icelandic for 113 years this was the definitive translation of dracula for anyone who spoke
icelandic and no one in that time realized one crucial detail it wasn't real asmunson didn't
actually translate the book a stoker wrote it instead he added his own twists and turns to
create a new story that included more gore and sex and even some new characters the version asmonson
published was shorter and full of action that almost exclusively takes place in transylvania
it was essentially an early version of fan fiction and no one bothered to compare the text to the
original for over a hundred years number nine our daily bread is translated from a word no one knows
if you read the lord's prayer you'll recognize the line give us this day our daily bread you
could trace this back to latin where the line is panum nostrum quoted da nobis hodi and then if you
go back to greek text you'll find something else which i'm not even going to try and pronounce the
common translation is what you'd expect based on what we've established here the problem is
there's a word introduced here that no one knows epocion this word appears nowhere else not just
not in the bible but anywhere that's other than one appearance it made in a 5th century accounting
papyrus that has since been lost appusion has no etymology it's linked in no definitive way to any
other word so the translation to the word daily is something of a mystery epi is translated as a
prefix meaning for while uzion was taken to mean for the being in relation to the current day the
problem with translating the word as daily is that the word daily appears plenty other times it's
translated as hemaran which was a fairly common word so to pick a brand new never before seen
word doesn't make a ton of sense and of course it seems like there's no chance we'll ever get
to the bottom of it number eight the aristotlean multi-language translation rollercoaster everyone
who's ever set foot in a philosophy class knows aristotle he's been called the father of virtue
ethics political science comparative anatomy and physiology logic and probably many other things
despite this a remarkable amount of aristotle's writings have been lost the west only has access
to a small number while the muslim world actually had quite a bit more thanks to their historical
conquests and because of this division modern aristotle is the result of so many translations
and re-translations it's arguable that we have no idea what the man ever truly said
many of aristotle's works were lectures so not specifically things he wrote but that he said
and then were written down by others his first works appeared in greek and then were translated
to syriac an aramaic dialect the writings were then translated into arabic christians in europe
began the process of translating aristotle after this and it happened in several places and times
at one point jewish rabbis translated the arabic texts on behalf of christian monks into spanish
and then into latin none of this was done with the benefit of a dictionary and is the reason
that many arabic words entered the english language like alcohol algebra and even coffee
number seven refried beans are not refried if you like mexican food you probably enjoy refried beans
and why not they're delicious they're also not as old as something like tortillas or guacamole which
are also strongly associated with mexican food refried greens have only been around
for about a hundred years and owe most of their popularity to tex-mex cuisine in spanish refried
beans called frijoyes are fritos translate that back into english and you don't get refried beans
you get well-fried beans and to address the confusion of english speakers who want to make
beans from scratch you don't fry them twice you don't even fry them once really you just mash them
and then cook them with a pot and onion and spices refried is just a mistranslation of refritos
but became so well known that no one bothered to fix it 6. biblical unicorns may have just
been oryx if you're committed to reading through the bible you may have noticed that unicorns pop
up a number of times that's a bit of a curious thing to notice since regardless of your position
on religion mythical beasts typically aren't the sorts of things that are involved in it
and the mentions of unicorns are never really done in a way that makes them sound fantastical
or metaphorical the word that was later to be unicorn was riem a hebrew word it described a
strong horned animal so sure that could be a unicorn but it could also just as easily be an
auric these were a species of cattle that stood about six feet high at the shoulder basically
giant cows with forward curving horns they went extinct in 1627. depending on which book and
which translation we're dealing with the word may also be oryx or even rhinoceros 5. the not
so abominable snowman you can find stories of a mysterious wild man in remote locations
all over the world north america has bigfoot which rose to fame in the 1950s and is based around
native american myths that are over a thousand years old over in asia they have the yeti which
got anglicized as abominable snowman back in 1921 by journalist henry newman newman was interviewing
british explorers who had just come back from mount everest and had seen large footprints there
the local guides explained that the footprints were made by something called a matu kangmi or
the man bear snowman so basically the yeti in translating the name newman kept the snowman part
but translated met talking correctly his first dab but it gave him the word filthy but apparently the
filthy snowman didn't have the right ring to it so he swapped in abominable as the first real contact
most of the western world had with the story the name stuck and has remained ever since 4.
aladdin was added to arabian nights by its french translator the book 1001 night sometimes known as
arabian nights is an extremely popular work that collects numerous middle east and folk tales and
was first published in the 1700s characters such as alibaba and sinbad joined pop culture
as a result of the book and most famously aladdin aladdin is where things become most interesting in
regards to the work as a whole the tale of the boy who finds a magic lamp and woos a princess
is well known to everyone these days partly thanks to disney but it was never actually a part of the
original story it was added later when the book was translated into french by antoine gallard
prior to that the story had never seen print so where did a french translator get one of the most
famous stories of the arabic world from well the story wasn't from the arabic world at all to begin
with that was added later the original story took place in china not the middle east and gallaudet's
source was alleged to be a syrian man named hannah diab he supposedly told the story to go on to
then wrote it down he inserted the 1001 knights of his own accord with no real way to confirm any
of the sources or how he chose to translate it and it just became a part of history number three the
king of the jungle never lived in a jungle giving a nickname to animals is not all that common but
it does happen dogs have been known as man's best friend for ages and the most well-known
nickname any animal species has is probably the lion with its moniker king of the jungle
the king part comes from the lion's mane which has been likened to a crown many times over the
years they call them king of the beasts as well but it's not just the king part that's weird
it's the jungle part if you've ever been on safari or just watched nature documentaries about lions
in the wild you may have noticed that lions tend to live on the savanna they like open spaces lions
do not live in jungles so why would anyone call them king of a place that they don't actually live
jungle is a word borried from hindi in sanskrit and depending on your source it may be jungle
jangle jungle or even jingly all of these words do have the same meaning however which essentially
means wild or uninhabited places like a savannah the specific meaning of a dense forest is not
attributed to the word and arguably would never be in the area from which the word originates since
they don't have jungles there the evolution of the word into english came to include dense forest and
left the original meaning behind number two firefox is a red panda if you've been on the
internet since the beginning there's a good chance you're on your seventh or eighth browser by now
way back in the day people were using things like netscape to view the web before internet explorer
and safari made their debuts and in time we ended up with google chrome opera and firefox firefox is
an easily recognizable browser and as of january 2022 accounts for just over four percent of global
browser usage not a huge chunk by any means but its popularity is fairly stable and even if you
don't use it you probably recognize their flaming fox logo the weird thing is it was never supposed
to be a fox mozilla the company behind firefox started in 1998 after netscape died it was made
by many of the same people and their logo was originally a phoenix makes sense right they were
rising from netscape's ashes they needed to change their name from netscape to something new so they
wanted an animal that not a lot of people were familiar with at the time so they chose the red
panda the firefox logo despite the name is a red panda the problem lies in a translation error and
the fact that a stylized cartoon red panda can very easily look like a fox many words take on
literal meanings when translated from a language like chinese into english so the chinese word
for red panda literally translates to fire fox because that's kind of what a panda looks like
which is why so many people assume the animal in the logo is an actual fox number 1. the sailor
cousins sailor moon was one of the first anime shows to hit big with western audiences in the
90s the franchise is worth billions and it's still going strong upwards of 30 years later
despite this there were some noticeable changes made to the show from its japanese origins to
the english version western audiences saw the most egregious translation shift was the change
in sailor neptune and sailor uranus in the west these characters are cousins really close cousins
english translations made them relatives but in the source material they're a couple the
relationship was changed to be less controversial in the west side stepping the idea of a lesbian
couple which the studio deemed inappropriate for a children's show what they created was something
arguably more controversial since all they did was change the dialogue and the result was a pair
of cousins who were clearly flirty and romantic with one another the translation was unable to
adequately account for their on-screen actions and just made the entire show weird