So, yesterday, for the first time, I noticed at 9 am that the translation I was finishing for 10 pm was actually due one hour later. Panic ensued, of course. But this made me think of all errors and silly-stupid-basic-oh-so-shameful mistakes that make us hide in a cave and never be seen by other humans (or clients, humans or not) for a decade.
One of mine that I have a hard time to forget was translating the French “défense” as something being protected rather than forbidden. As you can imagine, it was a very bad action, and the text would go in a completely different direction if promoting it. Thankfully, it was caught in time by the proofreader.
What about you? When were you ashamed? What did you do?
