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The Ridiculous SOTU Spanish Subtitles Made Us Laugh And Cry At The Same Time

Ridiculously Awful SOTU Spanish Subtitles Will Make You Chuckle
Roque Planas
By 

National Reporter, HuffPost

The White House YouTube account offered a version of Tuesday's state of the union speech with Spanish subtitles.

But as the bloggers at Latino Rebels immediately noticed, the closed-captioning was atrocious.

Most of it flew by so fast it was impossible to catch to anyone but hyper-caffeinated speed readers. The captions that did remain on the screen long enough to read often contained egregious errors that made the text incomprehensible.

It appeared that more than one translator was on the job -- one who wrote normally and one who wrote in all caps. The all-caps translator was responsible for the lion's share of the errors.

To the White House's credit, they posted the full text of the comments translated into Spanish online and offered Spanish-language updates on Twitter during the speech.

Check out a sampling of how awful the Spanish-language captions were below.

'FUT OWR E'?
YouTube
WE'VE NEVER HEARD OF 'FUT OWR E.'
'K' is not commonly used in the Spanish language
YouTube
So it's not quite clear what "FLEKS TEAMS" are or why we need them.
Proud masses
YouTube
Obama said: "I couldn't be prouder of them."

Translation: "I couldn't feel masses proud of it."
No time to hit backspace!
YouTube
It appears that here the translator pressed forward with errors to avoid missing anything. The result:

Obama said: "So I know the good, and optimistic, and big-hearted generosity..."

Translation: "So, so I kn know the generosity, the great..."
Made up words
YouTube
We've never heard of an "arioario."
Bad grammar
YouTube
In Spanish, adjectives must agree with the gender of nouns and must reflect whether they are single or plural. If not, it sounds totally wrong, as this translation does here. It should be "todas las limitaciones."
"President Koontdles"
YouTube
There is no such word as "koontdles," in any language. It appears to be a misspelling of "Rebekah," which normally would be translated into Spanish as "Rebekah." Or it might be a brutally butchered attempt to translate "with a story" -- "con un cuento." Either way, it's not even close to Spanish.
Viv inés ensias?
YouTube
We don't know what this one refers to. "Viv" is not a word and neither is "ensias," unless it is a misspelling of "encías" -- Spanish for "gums." Also, no woman named "Inés" was mentioned in the speech.
now. NOW. THANKS!
YouTube
The all-caps translator snuck up behind the lower-case translator to finish out the speech with an emphatic "THANK YOU" and stammered "GOD BLE BLESS YOU."
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