The translations are even more entertaining if the subject is typography. Converting type texts to English from French yields some amusing terms, like pig iron (typefaces) and police (fonts). In preparing a piece on Thierry Puyfoulhoux for the upcoming issue of Font magazine, I ran across his interview with Planéte Typographie. Google took what looks like a pretty good Q&A and spat out this gold:

What did you make with National Printing works?

As a trainee, I was made the claws on a creation of Jose Mendoza intended for the administrative printed papers form. I drew there the capitals of the Roman and all the Italic fat, all that on chart to be scraped, with old. The large Master passed twice by week to note the width of the damage. That was to twist the tripe to him to see beginners massacring his baby to him.

Nothing twists the tripe to me (in a good way) like reading this stuff.

Incidentally, if any generous French speaker is interested in sending me a real translation of that interview I would be most grateful. [Got ’em, thanks. Will post soon.] Puyfoulhoux is an underappreciated type designer who trained under the great José Mendoze y Almeida. Now that Puyfoulhoux’s foundry site (presencetypo.com) has regrettably expired, it’s my personal mission to introduce him to the world outside France.

Update: Oct 18, 2007
An english version of the interview is now published.

See also: Madisonian : Présence Typo at FontShop : Présence Typo at MyFonts