Many readers will be familiar with the infamous guarantee said to have been spotted on the menu of a Hong Kong restaurant: "All the water used in our soups has been personally passed by the chef." Some may also have heard of that creepy assurance printed in the catalog for an art exhibition during the Soviet era in Russia: "The artworks in this exhibition are by artists executed during the past 20 years."

It is so easy to snigger superciliously at these mistranslations — and many Western bookshops have shelves full of tomes doing just that — yet anyone who has interpreted speech or translated texts from one language into another knows that, sooner or later, egg on the face is a hazard just waiting to happen.

Consider the poor Japanese diplomat who was giving an important speech at an international gathering. At the end he wanted to say that he hoped to meet everyone again soon, but made the ghastly mistake of translating literally a Japanese phrase that means this, namely, "narubeku hayaku minasan to ome ni kakaritai." Literally, ome ni kakaru means "to hang before the eyes." So our unfortunate diplomat ended his speech — and, perhaps, his career — with the English sign-off: "I want to see all of you hanging before my eyes as soon as possible!"