Annals of poor translation
Language Log 2017-07-17
Below are two pages from the instruction book for a small point and shoot digital camera (the original in Chinese and the corresponding page translated into English). As you can see, the language display has a couple of strange choices.
jiǎn Zhōng 简中 ("simplified Chinese [characters]")
fán Zhōng 繁中 ("traditional Chinese [characters]") — fán 繁 literally means "complex; complicated; numerous", referring to the number of strokes compared to the simplified characters
For the first, the instruction manual follows Google Translate in giving "Jane", roughly approximating the sound of jiǎn 简. For the second, it give "numerous", whereas Google Translate gives "traditional".
It's ironic that the manual messes up only the Chinese when that is the language of the original text, and handles all the other languages correctly.
[Thanks to Rob Perez]