A flubbed translation with real-world impact! “Translation Error Costs Cuba the Use of Two Pitchers” is the New York Times article telling the tale. The official rules of the World Baseball Classic are in English only, but that isn’t stopping teams from looking at versions of them in other languages, too. This came back to cost Cuba:
A courtesy abstract of rules that Classic organizers gave the Cuban delegation before the first round in Mexico City, which translated the guidelines regarding individual pitch limits from English into Spanish, got a crucial one of them wrong. Rather than indicating that no reliever could pitch the day after throwing 30 or more pitches (“trienta o mas”), the sheet said more than 30 pitches (“mas que trienta”).
Following those words, Cuban Manager Higinio Velez removed two relievers — Yulieski Gonzalez and Yunieski Maya — after exactly 30 pitches during Cuba’s 6-0 loss to Japan on Sunday. He clearly wanted to keep them available for Monday night’s game against Mexico. But he learned less than three hours before Monday’s game — which Cuba won, 7-4 — that they in fact were ineligible to pitch, despite his being given incorrect information.
The Cubans were of course disappointed, but were splendid sports about it, admitting that the English rules, being official, should have been followed.
This incident caught my eye because the Japanese form 〜以上 can cause similar confusion. Dictionaries clearly define this as meaning “more than” (“mas que” in the Cubans’ case), not “or more” (“o mas”), but even by native speakers of the language this gets interpreted both ways, in my experience. (A web search for phrases like 20歳以上 or 65歳以上 will get you plenty of hits for pages that are talking about regulations or welfare systems that kick in at ages 20 and 65, not 21 and 66, for instance. The term is similarly flexible when applied to speeds, scores on tests, and plenty of other numerical figures.)
The Cuban pitchers lost to Japan, too, early this afternoon. The whole WBC tournament bracket makes my head hurt, but as far as I can tell Japan is going into its fourth game with Korea tomorrow, and whether it wins or loses, it might get a fifth match with its rivals from across the Sea of Japan. Might as well just make it a series.
