DR Panni: here is a post from the usenet group Rec.Arts.Past-Films obviously specially designed for your particular expertise:
Years ago -- maybe forty or fifty years ago -- I saw a movie
in which the female star and her husband were entertaining
some Hungarians. The wife tried to do something that would
really make a hit with the guests, so she somehow learned a
Hungarian toast. When she said it during dinner, the guests
were at first shocked and resentful, but then after they
thought about it a little bit they realized what she had
meant to say, so they laughed and returned the proper
greeting, and everything went okay after that.
The phrase as she learned it, to the best of my memory, was
"Eggashegera". I told this long ago to an acquaintance who
was a fluent Hungarian speaker, and he recognized the
problem immediately. He told me what the lady must have
said, how it translated into something insulting in English,
and he told me what she probably should have said, which
translated to something like "To your health".
If anyone recognizes the incident, I would like to know the
name of the file, the name of the movie, the actress, what
the phrase meant as she said it, what she should have said,
and what it means. Or any one or more of those.
Any help anyone cares to give me will be greatly
appreciated.
I for one am curious as to what the various mistranslations and actual intended meanings might have been. Do you know what film it was?
