www.alphadictionary.com

I'm reading Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown, and as usual he likes to intersperse his storytelling with foreign sentences and expressions. The problem is that many times he doesn't get it right. Here are a few examples (the expression in parentheses is the explanation he gives in English):

In Spanish:
¿Dónde están sus efectos? (Where are his belongings?) - ¿Dónde están sus pertenencias/cosas? - Efectos means effects as in special effects (efectos especiales) or the like.

mucha joyería (much jewelry) - muchas joyas - Joyería means jewelry store.

Él quiere que lo guardará (He wants to keep it) - Él quiere guardarlo.

In Japanese:
akuta same (deadly shark) - 人食いザメ (hitokuizame). Akuta (芥) means dust.

I'll read further and keep you posted.

Brazilian dude

In Japanese:

fugusha kisai (crippled genius) - fugu no kisai (不具の鬼才)

In Spanish:

Sí, sí, señor. My name is Señor Roldán. - Nobody would introduce himself as Señor Roldán, since señor is not found in anybody's birth certificate. Señor would be used when talking to or about a man to whom respect must be shown.

In German:

Du hast einen Ring (you have a ring) - Theoretically there's nothing wrong with Du hast einen Ring, but here Sie would have been more appropriate, Sie haben einen Ring, since the main character in the book doesn't know the German with whom he comes in contact.

Brazilian dude

In Italian:

Venti mille pesete (twenty thousand pesetas) - ventimila pesete

Dovè la plata? (Where is the money?) - Dove sono i soldi? Plata is Spanish for money, not Italian.

Brazilian dude

Perhaps Mr Brown is mixing his Japanese and Russian. Акула/akula is "shark" in Russian.

Funniest!

Speaking of Brown's prose, here are two Language Log discussions on how bad is writing is. I'm not sure I agree with them, but they're funny

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 01628.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 00844.html