Helen Kim
found a few amusing translations in the online store
24.01.2025
Toad Skin Melon And Exhausted Air Conditioner
If you rely solely on automatic translators for localizing an online store, some rather amusing translations might appear.
The article was written after exploring the website Elcorteingles.es, which is quite popular in Spain and throughout Europe. It’s worth noting that the website is truly remarkable. While navigating, I noticed several incorrect and even somewhat humorous translations.

Let’s assume you don’t speak Spanish but are fluent in English. While in Spain, you visit the El Corte Inglés website. Naturally, you would enable the automatic translation feature in your browser to translate the site from Spanish to English. The website will be translated, but not everything will be rendered as intended by the website’s administrators.

Let’s look at a few examples.
#1 Toad Skin Melon
Let’s take a look at the product card for the "Piel de Sapo" melon.

The melon variety "Piel de Sapo" is commonly known as "Santa Claus melon" in English (or Christmas melon or Piel de Sapo). However, the automatic translation turned it into "Toad Skin Melon," which, while literal, is not the correct term for English speakers.
Automatic translation of product names can sometimes lead to amusing and unexpected results. To avoid such quirks, it’s better to manage automatic translations using BabelShark.
#2 Verschwinden Instead Of Vanish
You may have noticed that in the previous example, the company name "El Corte Inglés" was translated as "The English Cut," which is completely unacceptable. Yes, automatic translators translate everything indiscriminately – brand names, user names, and more. Let’s look at another example.

Let’s visit the product page for the Vanish laundry detergent. Naturally, with automatic translation into English, the name will remain the same. But what happens if we enable automatic translation into German?

And in different languages, the brand name "Vanish" is translated differently on website. This is not correct from a marketing perspective. Automatic translation of brand names interferes with their recognition.
#3 Exhausted Air Conditioner
For some products that are currently unavailable, the label "Agotado" is used to mean "Sold Out" or "Out of Stock." However, in automatic translation, this word turns into "EXHAUSTED," which is not entirely accurate. On English-language websites, this term is typically not used; instead, it should be labeled as "Sold Out" or "Out of Stock."
Incorrect automatic translation can result in terms that do not align with the familiar standards of websites. This creates confusion for users and comes across as unprofessional.
But all the shortcomings of automatic translators could have been avoided if the website's translation had been reviewed by a human using the BabelShark service.
How BabelShark works
These are just a few examples of incorrect automatic translations. While you can't directly control how browsers translate your website, different browsers will handle translations in their own way. However, the issue of incorrect translations could be solved by a machine translation service with manual corrections, such as our service BabelShark.net.
Here’s how it works:
  • A developer marks the strings that need translation
    "String" is some text to translate in your product. It might be a button text, message or a whole <div> with HTML markup. BabelShark translates strings which have with a magic "__" CSS class.
  • The translation is done using AI
    Leverage cutting-edge AI technology to instantly translate your website with remarkable accuracy.
  • An editor in your account reviews the translations and either approves them or makes adjustments
    You (or your team) may review and edit all translations in database. Once edited, new translation propagate to all your visitors.
  • The translations then appear on the site, either immediately or later, depending on your chosen settings
    It depends on which mode you choose. We provided 6 modes for BabelShark to work. From "Translate everything live" to "Gather strings but translate nothing".
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