作者：韦忠和

How do you lose an entire city? A recently published brochure for sightseers and vistors to Jerusalem was sent to the printers with a mistake in the English translation.

Only after tens of thousands of brochures were printed and distributed throughout Jerusalem did an employee of City Hall notice that the English translation of the Hebrew text was wrong.

The mistranslation said “Jerusalem, There is no such city!”, when it should have read: “Jerusalem, there is no city like it!”.

这几天在google中搜索translation，一定会得到上面这个新闻。中文媒体中也有这条消息，看《中国日报》的新闻：

                                                                 官方观光手册翻译出错,  耶路撒冷市“消失”
Jerusalem? Never heard of it

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Something always gets lost intranslation, but usually not an entire city.

在不同语言间的翻译过程中，有些内容可能因漏翻或错翻而丢失，但一个城市的“消失”却很少见。

Jerusalem. There is no such city! the Jerusalem municipality said in the English-language version of a sightseeing brochure it had published originally in Hebrew.

“耶路撒冷。 没有这样一个城市！”（Jerusalem. There is no such city!）这是耶路撒冷市政府用希伯来语编写的观光手册英文版中的一句话。

The correct translation: Jerusalem. There is no city like it!

正确的翻译应该是：“耶路撒冷。没有一个城市像它那样。”（Jerusalem. There is no city like it!）

Carrying a photograph of the brochure, Israels Maariv newspaper said Wednesday tens of thousands of flyers had been distributed before city hall realized its mistake.

这本观光手册中还附了一张耶路撒冷的市容照片。以色列《晚报》周三报道说，在耶路撒冷市政厅发现这个翻译错误之前，已有数万游客阅读了这本观光手册。