Confusion all round

Is it just my imagination, or is the world very confusing at the moment?

Last week, I wrote about a translation mistake at Munich Airport, which seemed to suggest that passengers should use a lift "backwards".

This week, my Canadian colleague Margaret Davis passed on to me a report from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, in which some German politicians were calling for intelligence tests for immigrants and giving Canada as an example of a country where such tests already exist.

This is, in fact, nonsense. What Canada has is "intelligence checks", which are security checks, not intelligence tests. Again, it seems that poor translation is to blame for the confusion.

I experienced more confusion in Rome last weekend, when I attended a summer conference organized by the Business English Special Interest Group (BESIG). 

At the conference, a regular reader of this blog said she was confused by the fate of my pet parrot-economist, Maynard. She said I hadn't mentioned him since he flew away in anger back in March. Is Maynard back and is he OK, she asked?

I'm sorry for the confusion and also for any worry I have caused. Yes, Maynard did come back a few days later, then sulked for a month. and finally starting talking to me again in May. In retaliation — yes, childish, I know — I said I wouldn't mention him for three months.

But I have a good reason for breaking my silence now. Maynard was overjoyed last week after reading that his namesake, John Maynard Keynes, had been voted the most influential economist in a poll of Germany's economists for the Financial Times Deutschland.

Anyway, enough about Maynard and back to more confusion in Rome. When I shared a taxi from my hotel to the airport, the driver gave me the following receipt:

I went by taxi, honestly!

I immediately asked for a new receipt, saying that this one might cause confusion in Spotlight's accounts department. The taxi driver did give me a more "neutral" one, but disagreed with me. "There would be no confusion," he said. "The night club is much more expensive". Good that one thing is clear at least.