No matter how many hours Greeks have dedicated behind the desks of foreign language schools learning English, it is extremely difficult to reach the level of a native speaker. Well most native speakers..

Some words will continue to remain unknown, forcing us to resort to Google Translate, which can translate from English to Greek or vice versa whatever we ask it to.

In any case, of course, it is good to check what it tells us, since there is a risk that something could go wrong. As happened with an Athens city bus.

A photo circulating on the internet shows a piece of paper stuck inside the bus informing passengers that passengers are only allowed to disembark from a specific door, not to board.

Specifically, the driver chose the word “κάθοδος - kathodos”, to inform the Greek-speaking public, and used the word “cathode” for the ENglish translation, which in English refers exclusively to… the negative electrode in the electrolysis process. Of course the Greek word has both the meaning of descent and cathode, hence the mistake.

Many passengers therefore picked up their mobile phones to record this particular incident, with several wondering why the driver did not choose a simpler word like “exit”.