Making language mistakes while travelling in a foreign country where your native language isn't spoken is a common experience. We've all had our fair share of embarrassing linguistic slip-ups while exploring the world. However, one tourist in Portugal took it to the extreme by inadvertently triggering a bomb scare due to a mistranslation of the local term for "pomegranate."
According to The Telegraph, a 36-year-old Russian speaker from Azerbaijan was trying to order pomegranate juice at a restaurant in Lisbon. He used a language app to translate the word "pomegranate" into Portuguese, but the app gave him the wrong translation. He ended up ordering "grenade" instead of "pomegranate juice". The waiter thought the man was threatening him with a grenade and called the police.
A video taken from a car park outside the restaurant on Friday afternoon shows five armed police officers ordering a tourist to lie face down on the ground in the street. They then handcuffed him.
The tourist was taken to a nearby police station for interrogation. He was later released after it was found that he was not in possession of any weapons. His hotel room was also searched. A police spokesperson said officers were called to the restaurant and arrested the suspect as he tried to leave the establishment before carrying out a "thorough inspection of the premises".
Lisbon police also carried out a search of their databases and consulted sources from Portugal's anti-terrorism coordination unit, but nothing was found.
The newsportal reported that the words for pomegranate and grenade are the same in the Russian language; however, in Portuguese, they are two separate words (with roma meaning pomegranate and granada translating to grenade), a distinction that may have been lost during the language app's translation.
