This past week has been an exciting one for those with an interest in uncovering the meaning behind seemingly new words. The internet has been reeling trying to decipher the true meaning of covfefe – an obscure word used in a recent tweet by President Trump. While most have decided it is meaningless, there are still creative translations and interpretations being suggested about the infamous typo – but on a grander scale, what are the implications of typos such as this one on public communication and translation?
The Meaning of ‘Covfefe’ Uncovered by “Language Translation Experts”
President Trump made an unforgettable tweet early Wednesday morning when he sent out “Despite the constant negative press covfefe”. While some saw his mistake as an act of carelessness, countless others satirically deemed “covfefe” intentional, and sought to uncover its hidden meaning. Naturally, Twitter users took it upon themselves to provide the most creative translations.
As it happens, not all words can be directly translated to English. Untranslatable words do not bear an English equivalent and often require professional translation services in technical or legal documents in order to communicate an accurate meaning. The Arabic word Gurfa, for instance, is the amount of water that can be held in one hand. As you can see, in English we must substitute the foreign word with a phrase to convey a precise definition.
Is “covfefe” another of these untranslatable words?
Although it surfaced as only a typo, covfefe may just end up becoming a word with a unique significance in the English language – but what will that meaning be?
The True Meaning of Covfefe
While the meaning of covfefe currently remains obscure, possible translations and usages swept the web in the tweet’s aftermath. Here are a few of our favorites:
1. covfefe = coffee. That’s right—a widely popular translation that we’ve seen plays off of similar phonetics with the caffeinated beverage. President Trump’s tweet seems to have crossed borders, as even the European Railway Service, Eurostar, jumped on the bandwagon. The company recommends drinking a cup of “covfefe” on their trains to boost energy and stay awake!
2. A surefire way to win your next Scrabble tournament. Although the meaning of covfefe is still obscure here, your friends will be nothing short of impressed when you throw together the internet’s hottest new word to win your board game. Not to mention, this word is a full seven letters, which surely exceeds the negligible three-letter words that your friends managed to come up with.
3. JFK’s real message from his inaugural address. This is likely what JFK actually meant to say in 1961. We’ve been wrong all these years!
4. The next Pokémon character. It turns out the meaning of covfefe might just refer to a creature you’ll soon see in your pokédex. Meet this little animated gem whose only vocabulary might comprise “covfefe,” much like all the other Pokémon known to articulate their respective names in adorable, high-pitched voices.
5. Oprah’s latest giveaway. This charitable woman is known for surprising her audience with a myriad of new products, ranging anywhere from cars to food to…covfefe? We’ll take ten!
Aside from the memes some people argued that the true meaning of covfefe could be found in the Arabic language, with the word translating to “I will stand up” in English, but this theory has since been disproved by none else than Google translate – which brings us to an important caveat.
While the nuances of covfefe are endless, and while it has provided quite a bit of entertainment across the internet, on a grander scale it’s important to consider the trouble that comes coupled with misspellings like this one.
Not only can they cause confusion, both in the current moment and potentially down the line (when historians are going through archived tweets to understand the current political climate for example), but if the documentation is being adapted for an international audience, they can change entire meanings of sentences.
Misspellings and Grammatical Errors in Translation
While the incorrect Arabic translation of covfefe did not carry any serious implications in the end, both misspellings and grammatical errors can cause problems in translation and interpretation which may bear extreme consequences.
This is especially true in politics – after all, who can forget the infamous misinterpretation of Nikita Khrushchev’s Polish Embassy speech at the height of the cold war, which resulted in Americans hearing him threaten that “we will bury you”.
Only later was it confirmed that he had, in fact, said something along the lines of “We will be present when you are buried.” Albeit not much friendlier, but the implications of the statement were staggeringly different.
Aside from politics, accurate translation (or interpreting services) are particularly important in legal documents, pharmaceutical documents, and safety instructions. A single word can hold up the translation process, potentially change the entire meaning of a text, and have severe impacts on a person’s livelihood.
This is detailed in regard to the legal industry in our previous post “How a Comma Can Change the Law.”
So while covfefe may end up as just another internet phenomenon (with hundreds of potential meanings), it’s important to keep in mind the implications of the words we use, and how they will be understood by others – especially in other languages!
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