Apparently the word “pomegranate” gets lost in translation.
Talk about the hazards of miscommunication. The Telegraph reports that a tourist from Azerbaijan got in a whole lot of hot water when he stepped into a restaurant in downtown Lisbon hoping to order some fruit juice to drink. But his request alarmed the server so much that the police became involved, and the entire incident prompted a terror alert.
The Azerbaijani tourist, an Israeli citizen who speaks Russian, had used a translation app to place his order for a pomegranate drink. The one-in-a-million problem is that the Russian term for “pomegranate” is also the one used for “grenade.” Portuguese has separate words for these two things, so the translation app evidently opted for the wrong term; when the tourist displayed the screen to the restaurant employee to communicate what he wanted, the server was unsettled, to say the least.
The server cleared out the restaurant and contacted police, who arrived on scene and drew their weapons. After detaining the tourist and sweeping the restaurant, they found no evidence of explosives (obviously). An inspection of the traveler’s hotel room didn’t turn anything up, nor was he documented in any anti-terrorism databases, so they eventually let him go.
Russian isn’t the only language that overlaps the terms “pomegranate” and “grenade”—this crossover also exists in Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, and a ton of other languages, because the weapon was originally named for its resemblance to the fruit. Truth be told, I always thought grenades looked more like pineapples, but the weapon was named before the people who invented it likely ever would have seen a pineapple.
Portuguese security authorities recently raised the country’s official terrorism threat from moderate to significant due to the ongoing warfare between Israel and Hamas, so a misunderstanding over fruit and explosives makes a little more sense in this context. After all this, I’m sincerely hoping the tourist eventually got the beverage he was looking for. But maybe he’s lost his taste for pomegranate juice by now.
link: https://thetakeout.com/pomegranate-translation-to-grenade-bomb-scare-portugal-1850995650
I can’t bring myself to belive the server wasn’t just an asshole. Someone coming into a restaurant, using Google translate and asking “please may I have a grenade juice?” would not make me think “I have a grenade and am here to blow up the place.” Its waaaaay more likely that the dumb machine fucked up the translation. You gotta be a massive xenophobe to jump to that conclusion.
Not to mention, Pomegranate in Spanish is Granada, literally Grenade. It’s also one of the more famous regions in Spain, and it exports a lot of that fruit, which, as is usually the csse, has both Spanish and Portuguese on the labels to reduce costs.
No one in Portugal should jump to that conclusion unless they are ridiculously xenophobic.
I do also imagine xenophobia being involved, but the tourist might have just translated the word “grenade” and held that up on their phone screen.
Even if that were correct, it would net him a pomegranate. Not the juice he wanted. I seriously doubt this dude translated the world pomegranate and only the word pomegranate.
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I knew it was exactly this scene before even clicking the link. Iconic and a classic
The Azerbaijani tourist, an Israeli citizen who speaks Russian
Sorry, you lost me.
Obviously the languages have been like that for centuries.
But this has never happened before? Obviously, people must have been able to resolve such misunderstandings peacefully always, until now…
We are living in a crazy time.
I think the context that Portugal’s terrorism alert has only just been raised is enough to explain the fear
terrorism alert
the fear
Yes, that is probably specific for the crazy time.
Should have asked for an avocado instead, you never know when you’ll need a lawyer.
(I have no idea if this works in Portuguese, Russian or whatever. It does in French and almost in Spanish, there was a joke about that in Netflix Daredevil.)
