Originally Posted by
StAIR
Also, announcements from the flight deck are often mistranslated and doted with important factual errors / omissions. On one flight, the captain has gone to great lengths to describe the mechanical issue (some cargo got loose in the hold) at hand that was delaying the aircraft. The Cantonese version of the announcements just mentioned some vague 'mechanical issue'.
I don't know the mechanism for doing the translations, nor whether the cabin crew get any advance warning that a technical explanation is about to be given by the captain. But I also wonder about this: Might the cabin crew member sometimes be busy doing something in the galley when the captain makes the announcement, and then have to grab a handset and make an ad hoc PA translating something that they may only have half heard themselves? If that's the way it works, you could understand the translated version being less than full.
On a selfish personal level, though, I quite like it when the translated announcement bears no relationship whatsoever to the English. First, it's funny. And it's also nice not to have to hear the same thing two or three times every time there's a PA. But I know that doesn't help the passengers who depend on an accurate translation.