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This posting is not quite about a mistranslation, but about an ambiguous translation. The ambiguity is not necessarily the translator's fault. It's a problem inherent in English as well as some other languages. First, we know that the sentence "He hit the man with a crutch" is ambiguous, because the meaning depends on whether you interpret "with a crutch" as a complement modifying the verb "hit" or as an attributive clause modifying the noun "man". So this is what I'm going to talk about. In Matthew 6:19-21 of the Bible, we read "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." Should we consider "on earth" and "in heaven" as a complement of "store up" or an attributive clause of "treasures"? I checked a few other languages. Unfortunately, the French, Spanish, and Italian translations I found all have this ambiguity. But German (https://www.bible.com/de/bible/158/MAT.6.19-34.SCH1951) translates this passage as "Ihr sollt euch nicht Schätze sammeln auf Erden". Since "auf Erden" and "Schätze" are separate, it's safe to assume that "auf Erden" is a complement of "sammeln", not an attributive of "Schätze". I posted a question to a Facebook group, where someone told me the Japanese translation is "地上に財宝を蓄えるな", where "地上に" is a complement of the verb "蓄える", not an attributive of the noun "財宝". I find the Chinese translation (https://www.o-bible.com/cgibin/ob.cgi?version=hgb&book=mat&chapter=6) "不要为自己积攒财宝在地上" agrees as well, where "在地上" is a complement of the verb "积攒", not an attributive of the noun "财宝". Since Jesus said those words in Aramaic, the definitive answer probably has to come from the Aramaic original. On the Internet, I found the 8th century Aramaic version (https://theholyaramaicscriptures.weebly.com/mat-6.html), not any earlier one. Ignorant of this ancient language, I have to rely on the author of that web page who provides a good English translation, i.e. "You are not to place treasure for yourself in the Ara {the Earth}, a place that the sasa {the moth} and the akla {the weevil} destroy, and where the ganabe {the thieves} break through and they steal." Obviously he treats "in the Ara {the Earth}" as a complement of the verb "place", not an attributive of "treasure". It seems that there is consensus among various sources about this quote in the Bible. Curiously, when I asked this question in a forum dedicated to discussions about religions (https://www.city-data.com/forum/christianity/3470693-grammar-question-when-reading-bible.html), they all support the other understanding, i.e. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth" is equivalent to "Do not store up for yourselves treasures that are on earth", not "Do not store up on earth treasures for yourselves". (I find it easier to explain to them by rewriting the sentence than using linguistic jargon.) After I point out the Aramaic source, I get a reply "When it comes to grammar and God's Word, grammar gets a no-go". That's indeed an impeccable argument!

Legend has it that "Aristotle advised his pupil Alexander to avoid the king's seductive mistress, Phyllis, but was himself captivated by her. She agreed to ride him, on condition that she could play the role of dominatrix." (summarized by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_and_Aristotle) On the Wikipedia page, the Old French verse that told this story ended with Aristotle excusing himself to Alexander, saying Amour vainc tot, & tot vaincra tant com li monde durera with Modern English translation as "Love conquers all, and all shall conquer / As long as the world shall last". English readers don't need to be fluent in French, much less Old French, to identify the French words corresponding to the English words; e.g. amour "love", vainc "conquers" (think of vanquish), tot "all" (think of total), etc. But what's troubling to me is that the second part of the first line, tot vaincra, is translated as "all shall conquer". Conquer what, or who? The English word conquer is a transitive verb, i.e. it must be followed by an object. It took me a while to realize that "all shall conquer" actually means "(love) shall conquer all". The original author of the verse didn't write "& vaincra tot" simply because the inversion that places vaincra at the end makes it rhyme with the last word of the second line, durera ("last"). But an average English reader having no knowledge of French will have difficulty understanding "all shall conquer". So I edited the Wikipedia page to read "and shall conquer all". A few months later, someone disagreed and changed the translation back, saying this is poetic English. I took this issue to a language forum and asked for people's opinions. Most forum members agree with me. One even says he initially thought "all shall conquer" meant "all will fight back", which is a totally wrong interpretation. But one member, apparently a native Frenchman, disagreed with me and said the reader should adapt to the text of the author and the translator should respect the style of the author. Others disagreed with him, and my response was that "the adaptation should not go so far as to rendering the 'translated' text incomprehensible in the target language". I have no doubt that his mother tongue influences his assessment of English speakers' low tolerance of flexible word order. If he were to translate the Old French verse into Chinese (suppose he knows some Chinese), the Chinese verse would probably read "爱征服一切，一切征服", the latter part of which likewise makes no sense to a native Chinese speaker. In Romance languages such as French or Spanish, the primary word order is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object), just like English or Chinese. However, occasionally we see sentences whose constituent is moved to a different position than the SVO rule would stipulate. (E.g. "Ont été reçus Pierre, Paul et Marie", possibly in response to "à Qui a été reçu ?" [from https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordre_des_mots]) Native speakers are used to these sentence structures and can understand the meaning based on context and/or the idiomatic nature of such expressions. As far as I know, there is no metric or index in linguistics to measure the word order flexibility of a language. We know that highly inflected languages such as Latin and Russian have fairly flexible word order. But English and Chinese would be quite low on this metric, while various Romance languages are probably in the middle. Old French will probably be closer to Latin because the case system of nouns from Latin had not been entirely eliminated. While Old French tot is not a noun, the very existence of a case system must have accustomed the speakers back then to mentally evaluate various word orders until the best sense was made. But modern day English speakers don't do that, ending up with a wrong understanding or lack of understanding of the word-by-word literal translation, "all shall conquer".

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_Chinese_communism), "[t]he famous quote from Mao Zedong, reported to have been uttered in 1968, reflects the commitment of the new government of the People's Republic of China: 'Women hold up half the sky'". That quote has been well-known around the world for more than half a century. But the original sentence does not literally translate as such. The Chinese sentence "妇女能顶半边天" is literally "Women can hold up half the sky". The auxiliary verb '能', meaning "can", is omitted in the popular English translation. Why does this matter? Imagine a manager says "John can do this job", but not "John does this job". Clearly there is a difference, one stating a potential, the other a fact. To an English reader, at least one that loves languages and so may analyze each word of a sentence, the translation "Women hold up half the sky" implies that women are actually holding up half the sky, as if the feminist movement had achieved its ultimate goal. But the Chinese original truthfully acknowledges the challenge by only stating women's potential. Incidentally, according to the latest research (https://m.fx361.com/news/2024/0108/22945689.html), published in late 2023, Mao said those words back in 1958, not 1968. The research also rejects a few claims of other origins of this quote.

sept seven. September was the seventh month in Roman calendar, in which a year started with March. médecin (masc.) doctor, docteur, physician. médecine medicine (field of study). médicament medicine, medication. Note that the masculine word médecin can refer to either a male or a female doctor. The feminine word médecine does not refer to a female doctor, nor to medicine (as drug or medication), but to the field of study or medical science (see §3 of the Notes of this book for the tendency of a feminine noun to refer to an abstract concept). To refer to a female doctor, just say une médecin even though the word is grammatically masculine, or une femme médecin if you want it to be more explicit (compare the feminine word personne, which can refer to a person of either sex). Note the spelling of the two words; the second vowel is e, while it is i in médicament. Also note médecin should not be confused with the unrelated French word physicien (“physicist”, not “physician”). Examples, aller chez / va voir le médecin / le docteur (“to go see the doctor”); étudier la médecine (“to study medicine”). attirer to attract. Prefix at- means “toward”. The root, -tirer meaning “to draw”, is cognate with the root of retire (originally or literally “to draw back”). This word is not related to attire (“clothing”, “dress”), but as a mnemonic, imagine somebody’s pretty attire attracts people’s attention. Example, attirer mon attention sur cette question (“to draw my attention to this matter”; note sur, not à, and mon, not ma, due to a- of attention). regretter to regret; to miss; to be sorry. Note the second meaning, as in je regrette le bon vieux temps (“I miss the good old days”). See also manquer (“to lack”; “to miss”).

French socialist, philosopher and economist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote a book titled Philosophie de la misère. The titles of its Italian and Spanish translations both translate misère to its cognate, miseria (Italian and Spanish take exactly the same spelling). Its German translation uses the word Elend, which means "misery". The book is indeed about human misery or suffering. But its English translation has both Philosophy of Misery and Philosophy of Poverty. According to Google Ngram, most of the time since its early translation, especially since 1970, the latter is a much more popular title. And the title of the Chinese translation, literally translated back to English, is Philosophy of Poverty. This is unfortunate because the readers may mistakenly think that the book is only about poverty, not misery in general. Karl Marx responded to Proudhon's book immediately by writing a book, by playing with the words, titled Misère de la philosophie. Now, even more unfortunate than translation of Proudhon's book is that Marx's book is almost exclusively translated into English as Poverty of Philosophy instead of Misery of Philosophy. Are we really supposed to equate misery with poverty? No. If Victor Hugo's Les Misérables had been called, say, Les Pauvres, readers would be misled and confused. Poverty is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for misery. St Francis of Assisi lived in poverty without being in misery, while extremely rich people may still feel living a life of misery. A Google search finds a person named Tim Newcomb, who recently translated Marx's book as Misery of Philosophy. I can't find any information about this translator. We can thank him for making this long overdue correction.

Those knowing or learning German may find this interesting. Frederick Engels' Einzelfamilie was translated as 'monogamous family'. I don't think that's right. The German original is "Es wird sich dann zeigen, daß die Befreiung der Frau zur ersten Vorbedingung hat die Wiedereinführung des ganzen weiblichen Geschlechts in die öffentliche Industrie, und daß dies wieder erfordert die Beseitigung der Eigenschaft der Einzelfamilie als wirtschaftlicher Einheit der Gesellschaft." The English translation on the fairly authoritative or at least frequently cited website Marxists.org is "Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society." I think the German word Einzelfamilie should be translated simply and literally as 'single family' or 'individual family'. Engels was proposing that we not treat each family as an economic unit. It's possible that a careless English reader of the above translation would focus on just the phrase "abolition of the monogamous family" and assume that Engels was advocating abolition of monogamous families (and therefore calling for polygamy). That would be a gross misunderstanding of Engels. The word 'monogamous' or its noun means something totally different. Also, the German word Frau in this context means 'woman' more than 'wife'. But that's a minor point.

A few sample words from the second edition (http://yong321.freeshell.org/lsw/ed2.html😞 inversión investment; inversion. invertir to invest (money, time, etc.); to invert. The more common meaning is the first one, “investment”, “to invest”, which is a result of combining or confusing Latin invertere (“to invert”) with an unrelated Latin word investire (“to clothe”, “to cover”), which English invest came from. The latter entered Italian and somehow acquired the sense of “to place capital in”. Example, cartera de inversiones (“investment portfolio”). marchar to go, to march (cognate); (reflexive) to leave. Note the meaning of the reflexive usage, just like irse (“to leave”). Normally the meaning of a verb used reflexively can be guessed (action to oneself, passive voice, or indefinite person like English one). But sometimes they acquire a new meaning that does not follow the said rules, as in the case of marcharse or irse. medio (adj., adv., n.) half, middle; (n.) means, way; (pl.) news media. media (adj., n.) half, mean, average; (n.) sock, stocking, pantyhose. Cognate with mean, median. The adjective media is simply the fem. form of medio. As a noun, media only occurs in certain expressions (see Examples); the meaning of “sock, stocking” of media is because a sock covers half the leg. Note the adverb can only be medio, not media. Examples, media hora / libra (“half an hour / pound”; media is adj.); clase media (“middle class”); altura media (“average height”); la habitación está medio vacía (“the room is half empty”; medio is adv. so it does not change to media); en medio de la noche (“in the middle of night”; medio is n.; but in media noche, “midnight”, media is adj.); por medio de (“by means of”); son las tres y media (“it’s half past three”; media is n.); medio de comunicación (“news media”, note medio, not media, and it can be preceded by un). mozo boy, young man. There are various etymological theories about this word, including one that connects it to muchacho (“boy”). Alternatively, we know that the Biblical name Moses, according to one theory, means “child of” in Egyptian (see Wikipedia for Moses and its reference that states “Moses is derived from the common element in names such as Thutmosis (‘Thoth created him’)...)”. For lack of definitive proof, we can at least take Moses as a mnemonic for mozo and imagine him as a young boy or young man. Or think of the young music genius Mozart as a mozo. (The feminine form moza means “girl” but is not as common.)

The following are sample headword entries from my Learning Italian Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics, which makes use of etymology to help you remember Italian words, and failing that, suggests a mnemonic. This is the first book that combines these two methods in learning Italian words. legge law. From Latin legem, a conjugated form of lex (“law”). Cognate with Spanish ley, French loi, English legal and loyal, and possibly English law if traced to Proto-Indo-European. The easiest way to remember this word is to pretend g is pronounced /g/ (instead of /dʒ/) and think of legal. ogni every. Cognate with the prefix omni- as in omnibus (old name for “bus”; an omnibus is for all or everybody), omnipotent (“all-powerful”). aprire to open. From Latin aperire (“to open”). Cognate with aperture, aperitif (working up the appetite is likened to an opening action), Spanish abrir and French ouvrir (“to open”). problema problem. The only thing to note about this easy word is that it is masculine, in spite of -a ending. In fact this word is masculine in most Romance languages such as Spanish problema, French problème. Many words of Ancient Greek origin and ending with -ma are masculine. risposta response, answer, reply. The root is from Latin ponere (“to put”). Cognate with Spanish respuesta (“reponse”, “answer”). English response is etymologically unrelated but looks close and can be used as a mnemonic. Examples, la risposta corretta / sbagliata (“the right / wrong answer”); una risposta a / ad una mail (“a reply to a mail”). scopo purpose, aim, object, goal. From Latin scopus (“target”). English scope is from this Italian word. Note the meaning of this word is “purpose”, “aim”, not “scope”, which would be ambito or estensione in Italian. Examples, senza scopo (“with no purpose”, “pointlessly”); allo scopo di fare (“for the purpose of doing / in order to do”); per quale scopo? (“for what purpose?”). See also ambito. campione champion; sample. From Latin campionem (“fighter”). Cognate with English and French champion, Spanish campeón (“champion”). What is curious and also difficult about this word is the sense of “sample”. According to Kruskal and Mosteller, two statisticians, the word initially meant “fighter”, then “champion”, and then “a sample of merchandise presumably as champion of the whole”. When we say a person represents his team, it can mean that he’s a very good player in his team and so can represent the team (as a champion does), or that he’s closest to the average in his team so he represents a typical member the best (as a statistical sample does). The two senses conflate and we end up with one word that means either “champion” or “(statistical) sample” depending on the context. Example, un campione di vino (“a sample of wine”).

The following are sample headword entries from my Learning Spanish Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics, which makes use of etymology to help you remember Spanish words, and failing that, suggests a mnemonic. I'm not aware of any other book dedicated to foreign language vocabulary study that intentionally combines these two methods in learning. humo smoke; fume (cognate). From Latin fumus. Note the f- to h- conversion, which is common. Example, el salmón ahumado (“smoked salmon”); aquí no se fuma (“no smoking here”); hay humo hay fuego (“where there’s smoke there’s fire”, literally “there’s smoke, there’s fire”). vino wine (cognate). If the cognation is not obvious, think of vine (the plant), which is related to vino. rincón (interior) corner, nook. Arabic origin. Use a mnemonic such as “a raccoon in the corner of the house”. See also esquina (“exterior corner”). cuñado brother-in-law. cuñada sister-in-law. From Latin cognatus. Cognate with cognate. (Yes, the English word cognate is cognate with this Spanish word.) The original and literal meaning is “related”, hence cuñado (“related by blood”) and cognate (“related in language evolution”). It’s common for Latin gn to change to Spanish ñ.

http://yong321.freeshell.org/bcc/ Basic Chinese Characters contains 2500 commonly used Chinese characters. The book sorts the characters by usage frequency. A learner may choose a certain point in the book suitable to his or her level and start to learn the characters. The book is a good way to learn or review Chinese characters in a casual way and on a cell phone. [Update Feb 3] Found and corrected some errors. Added page numbers to the bottom of pages. Made the PDF file smaller.

Amazon allows me to make the book free during promotion periods. I'll do this promotion frequently.

susceptible touchy, sensitive, delicate, easily offended; (followed by de) likely, apt. Note that this word in the first sense is not quite the same in meaning as English susceptible. And the second meaning is absent in the English word. Examples, cette dame est très susceptible (“this lady is very touchy”); la proposition est susceptible d’être acceptée (“the proposal is likely to be accepted”). fringues (informal) clothes. Unknown etymology. As a mnemonic, think of the fringes of clothes. pendule pendulum (masc. n.) (cognate); pendulum clock, small clock (fem. n.). Note the different genders. To remember them, as a mnemonic, consider the fact that men like the mechanism of a machine (such as the pendulum) while women like the whole machine as a usable gadget. dauphin dolphin; successor, dauphin (heir apparent, héritier apparent). English dolphin is from Old French and dauphin from Modern French (hence the unchanged spelling). It is justifiable to give two distinct etymologies to these two words, spelled the same in French. The latter, meaning “successor”, is from the title assumed by Guigo the Count in 1140 and by the eldest son of King of France in 1343. It’s possible that the adoption of this title was originally related to the sea animal dolphin, commonly seen in Southeast France.

amateur lover (of something), enthusiast; amateur, non-professional. Note unlike in English, this word does not have the negative connotation of “being inexperienced”. After all, it’s from a Latin word from which French amour (“love”) and English amorous are derived. Examples, un amateur de musique (“a music lover”); un photographe amateur (“an amateur / non-professional photographer”). semelle sole (of shoe). Unknown etymology. Use a mnemonic such as “the sole of the shoe smells”.

Language difficulty can be measured, as long as we set a few criteria. See my article at http://english-for-chinese.blogspot.com/2017/09/language-difficulty.html

No, you cannot. Omitting "about" at the end makes the sentence ungrammatical. By the way, "ain't" is bad English.