With the release of Google Translate’s latest update, BBC Culture revisited some of history’s most notorious mistranslations—mistakes that shaped public perception, politics, and even science. These range from a U.S. president allegedly declaring “I have a carnal desire for the Poles,” to a 19th-century astronomer’s “discovery” of life on Mars.
Life on Mars That Never Was
In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, then director of the Brera Observatory in Milan, began detailed observations of Mars. He described the lighter and darker regions as “seas” and “continents,” and used the Italian term canali to describe long grooves or channels.
The problem was in translation. Canali correctly meant “channels,” but colleagues rendered it into English as “canals”—implying artificial waterways. This mistranslation fueled the theory that intelligent Martians had engineered vast irrigation systems.
American astronomer Percival Lowell became convinced of their existence. Between 1894 and 1895, he sketched hundreds of these supposed “canals” and later published three books arguing that a dying Martian civilization had built them to transport water.
The notion caught on. H.G. Wells, inspired by Lowell’s writings, published The War of the Worlds in 1897, depicting a deadly Martian invasion. In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs released A Princess of Mars, another story of Martian society in decline—complete with character names lifted directly from Schiaparelli’s maps.
Today, astronomers agree the “canals” never existed. NASA explains that the human eye tends to connect dark dots into straight lines, creating the illusion of networks crisscrossing the Martian surface. In short, the “evidence” of Martian engineering was little more than an optical trick amplified by poor translation and imagination.
immy Carter and the “Desires of the Poles”
In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Poland, where his interpreter turned a diplomatic speech into a string of absurdities. Carter had intended to say, “I have come to learn your views and to understand your hopes for the future.” Instead, his translator, Steven Seymour, rendered it as, “I desire the Poles carnally.”
The blunders didn’t stop there. A simple line about Carter being happy to be in Poland was transformed into “He is happy to grasp Poland’s private parts.” Another phrase, “I left the United States this morning,” became “I have left America and will never return.”
The State Department had mistakenly hired Seymour, a translator of written Polish with little experience in live interpretation. The situation grew so dire that another interpreter, Jerzy Kryski, who had previously worked at the U.S. Embassy, was hastily brought in. Unfortunately, he barely understood Carter’s English and eventually opted to stay silent during parts of the speech.
By the end of the trip, Carter’s mistranslated words had spread across Poland, sparking countless jokes and cementing the incident as a legendary diplomatic mishap.
“We Will Bury You”
Translation missteps also heightened Cold War tensions. In 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was quoted as telling Western diplomats, “We will bury you.” The phrase hit front pages worldwide, deepening fears of nuclear confrontation.
In reality, his meaning was closer to: “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig your grave.” He was referencing Karl Marx’s idea that capitalism would collapse from within, with the working class eventually overthrowing it.
While hardly friendly, the statement was not the outright nuclear threat it seemed. Years later, in a 1963 speech in Czechoslovakia, Khrushchev clarified: “Of course we won’t bury you with shovels. Your own workers will do that.”
By then, however, the phrase had already become infamous—an example of how a single mistranslation could inflame global anxieties.
