From Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History by Anna Aslanyan:
The question of multilingual communication became especially poignant when Britain voted to leave Europe. The 2018 Brexit white paper, published in twenty-two EU languages, was in parts translated spectacularly badly — or appeared ‘very mythical’, as one German-speaker politely put it. Another asked, ‘What does Fischergemeinden even mean? People praying for fish?’ (The made-up compound is slapped together from ‘fisherman’ and a word whose meanings include ‘community’ and ‘parish’.). The document misspelled ‘Estonia’ in Estonian, ‘Finland’ in Finnish, ‘German’ in German and ‘UK’ in Croatian. In French, ‘principled Brexit’ acquired moral overtones: a Brexit with, rather than based on, certain principles. In Welsh, the word cenhadaeth was use to mean ‘mission’ in a corporate sense, despite its religious connotations. The German text, apparently the worst, judging by native speakers’ reactions, also had ‘letter (of the law)’ translated as ‘letter (of the alphabet)’. A Dutch-speaking Twitter user wrote, ‘Dear UK government. We appreciate the effort and you probably have no clue, but please stick to English if you want us to understand you. This is horrible. Kind regards, The Netherlands.’
