A story by Grégory Onillon at Libé describes how an American translator got fired for subtitling a Sarkozy appeal to the French to “s’unir à moi” as “to rally my inflated ego.” An amusing sidelight is that the story mistranslates the mistranslation as «unissez-vous à mon ego surdimensionné» (rally here should be rendered ranimer or the like; s’unir à would be rally to). Via the Enigmatic (and always delightful) Mermaid, who attaches the post to the labels “Oopsie, Traduttore_Traditore” and suggests “Translator thinks, I will just make a little joke here, surely the editor will spot it and we’ll have a laugh at the drinking fountain later on. Editor doesn’t spot it…”
Hmm, what would be a better translation? “Come together, right now, over me”?
One and one and one is three!