Hilarious Hotel Sign

While setting up this website, I spent hours laughing at translation errors already circulating the web. One of my favourites is definitely this one from a hotel in Zurich: “Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.”

While this mistake is hilarious, it is also a prime example of how translations errors can be costly for a businesses reputation. According to Google today, there are almost 50,000 instances of this exact phrase online.

With the explosion of social media and the opportunity to tweet, like and mail such errors around the world in a matter of seconds, such mistakes can pop up again and again in conjunction with your business.

Is this the kind of first impression that you want to create for your product?