Lost in translation

Sometimes the right words elude me. Sometimes what I want to say just doesn't come out of my mouth. I have these problems in my native tongue. Imagine the problem of trying to precisely express yourself in a 'foreign' tongue.

The Associated Press reported a story of a German passenger who used the wrong idiom to express his desire to use the toilet but ended up in jail for nine months.

How could this happen?

Apparently the idiom he used was "the roof would go" or "then the roof goes". To a flight attendant, a passenger using words that indicate the roof of the plane is about to come off is not a laughing matter and one, apparently, that will force the plane to make an emergency landing.

I did find a link to the AP article (name changed to protect the innocent... we'll just refer to him as 'G'):


Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
An intoxicated German passenger jailed for making a bomb threat really meant that his bladder - not the plane - was about to explode, a federal judge ruled. G, 23, who speaks little English, was freed Wednesday after spending nine months in prison on federal charges of interfering with a flight crew and making a false bomb threat.

Source: United States v. G, 841 F. Supp 1169 (S.D. Fla. 1993)
G was a passenger on a charter flight from Fort Lauderdale to Hanover, Germany. Shortly after take-off, he went to the middle of the plane, and, in the court's words "acted as if he thought he was in the toilet." Id. at 1170. When stopped by flight attendants, G announced "the roof was going to go." Id. He then made a broad sweeping gesture which the attendants thought indicated an explosion would occur. He became unruly, and the plane returned to Fort Lauderdale because of fear that he had brought a bomb aboard. Later, at his guilty plea hearing, G claimed his gesture was "to show that his bladder was going to explode and not the roof of the aircraft" and elaborated, "well, if my bladder explodes, then also the roof would go." Id. at 1171.