English As She Is Spoke



English as She Is Spoke is the common name of a 19th-century book written by Pedro Carolino, and falsely additionally credited to José da Fonseca, which was intended as a Portuguese-English conversational guide or phrase book, but is regarded as a classic source of unintentional humour, as the given English translations are generally completely incoherent.

The humour appears to be a result of dictionary-aided literal translation, which causes many idiomatic expressions to be translated wildly inappropriately. For example, the Portuguese phrase chover a cântaros is translated as raining in jars, whereas an idiomatic English translation would be raining buckets.

It is widely believed that Carolino could not speak English, and that a French-English dictionary was used to translate an earlier Portuguese-French phrase book, O Novo guia da conversação em francês e português, written by José da Fonseca. Carolino likely added Fonseca's name to the book without his permission in an attempt to give it some credibility. The Portuguese-French phrase book is apparently a competent work, without the defects that characterize English as She Is Spoke.[1][2][3]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30411