Why Does Lego Scrimp on Translation?

Some businesses decisions leave me truly gobsmacked.

Some time ago, I noticed a huge mistake hiding in a sign at the Legoland Deutschland amusement park. I thought it would be an exception. However, recently I found even more examples of botched translation on the LEGO^® website and its Spanish Facebook page.

If we were just talking about some small, unknown company, I wouldn’t be quite so scandalised.

But LEGO is a company made around €5.16 billion in 2019, a net profit of over €1.1 billion and has over 16,000 employees. In the same year, the FCA group (FIAT Chrysler) had a turnover of €108 billion with a net profit of €2.77 billion, and we are talking about real cars here, not plastic ones.

This lack of attention to translation is out of line with the very philosophy of LEGO^®, whose motto is “only the best is good enough”.

But let’s get to the point.

A few summers back, I took my family to the Legoland Deutschland amusement park in Günzburg, Germany. I was walking through the Lego Factory attraction (where the production process of LEGO^® bricks is explained) and came to the area where loose pieces of Lego can be bought in bulk. Here, I noticed that the Italian translation of a sign had clearly been written by someone who did not speak Italian (as seen in the image below).

As professionals, we are used to translation mistakes cropping up in the strangest places and, to be honest, we are pretty much used to it at this point. However, it is still surprising to find one in a place that where such close attention is paid to detail. It’s even more surprising when you consider that this mistake was made by a massive company which has practically made precision a trademark. How can it be possible that nobody thought to ask a native speaker for a translation, let alone a translator?

It must be said that LEGO^® can only really be partially responsible for this, as the park is managed by the Merlin Entertainments group, which specialises in building and managing amusement parks. However, even then we are talking about another giant which has a turnover of over £1 billion and owns or operates 110 parks in 23 countries around the world.

Obviously, signs like the one at the LEGO^® shop are just small parts of a much larger mechanism. Despite it all, that poorly translated message still gets through to visitors (for those who don’t speak German, it simply asks for loose pieces to be placed in a separate bag to that used for minifigures, as they are differently priced), so ultimately it remains nothing more than an anecdote for us translators to tell.

True as that may be, it also still leaves people astonished and bitter at the lack of consideration given to language in a place visited by thousands of tourists.

And this situation happened again just a few weeks ago when, while browsing the online store in Spanish, I came across another mistake, the word “back” translated as “espalda” (rear) instead of “atrás” (go back). Probably the result of a poor machine translation done in a rush. Even here, a screen that will be seen by tens of thousands of buyers is not taken seriously and translated in a hurry. What a shame.