| ▲ | avalys 5 hours ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Most of these are authored by what appear to be non-native English speakers. So, the most likely explanation is a translation issue. In engineering literature from Russia from the 1960s, one sometimes finds references to a ‘water goat’ in papers that are otherwise about heavy machinery. It turns out this is a twice-translated rendition of ‘hydraulic ram’. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | kmoser 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That's on par with this (apocryphal) translation of "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" <=> "The vodka was good, but the meat was rotten." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ben_w 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> engineering literature from Russia from the 1960s, one sometimes finds references to a ‘water goat’ Oh, that's where it comes from! My dad told me something close when I was a kid, but according to him it was the early EU doing dictionary translation between English and French and getting "water sheep". I never could find it. Through an unrelated anecdote, in my head this is now bound to the music of "smoke on the water", with a sheep impression for the guitar (bass?) — "Sheep on the water, ba baa baaah, ba ba ba baaah" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | Joker_vD 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hey, it's not that easy to chose between "водяной баран" and "гидравлический таран", you know. My favourite example of troubled blind translation is still "naked conductor runs under the carriage". | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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