Lingo-ist-ics
Come fly with me
A hijack attempt on board a plane was thwarted recently when the pilot forewarned passengers in French, a language the gunman didn't speak, that he planned to land the plane roughly and cause their attacker to fall so that they could apprehend him in the confusion.
The lone hijacker was armed and was demanding to be taken from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott where the plane took off to France, where he hoped to gain political asylum.
The crew told the hijacker, who spoke Arabic, that there was not enough fuel to fly to France.
While talking to the gunman, the pilot, Captain. Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, realised that the hijacker did not speak French. He used the plane's public address system to tip off passengers in French about his plan to throw the hijacker off-balance
He proceeded to land the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight, by slamming on the brakes and then abruptly accelerating. The hijacker was thrown to the floor where passengers and crew assailed him.
Mind the cultural gap
A simple train sign can reveal a lot about linguistic and cultural differences.
Take the following sign seen under a train window:
"Please don't lean out of the window"
"It is forbidden to lean out of the window"
"It is dangerous to lean out of the window"
The first line was in English, the second was translated from the German and the third from Italian.
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A sign on a toilet door on board a Chinese train bears this instruction in English, "No Occupying while Stabling." This has nothing to do with housing horses as the wording suggests but a request that the toilet should not be used while the train is stationary.
For the creative love of auto technology
Over the years, many car companies have introduced advertising slogans in the 'native language' of the car… and not without some thought.
We've seen Vorsprung durch Technik ("Keeping ahead through technology"): if you were able to translate the meaning of the slogan then you were definitely the kind of person the makers of Audi vehicles wanted at the wheel. Auto Emoción, from Seat, plays on the words for car, self, emotion and motion. Renault introduced Createur d'Automobiles which is easily translatable for most, yet leaves the audience with a sense of 'creation' over and above mere 'manufacture'. The decision to keep VW's slogan, Aus Liebe zum Automobil ("For the love of the car") in German was to spotlight Volkswagen's heritage, and create intrigue.