The German below is equally funny. I'll to literally translate it:
- Insert to the right the bank notes, which should be true to party lines in every verse.
- Wait for accreditation in the display.
- Chose the selected pump
- Extinguishes the spy of the selected pump, taking the gas station

I wonder what happens "In bed of non-provision", once you have taken the gas station away. Unfortunately, this last sentence is cut off.

Actually, even if you *are* Italian, the gas pump instructions are usually cryptic at their best.

Moreover, the translation is not even just a literal one: I strongly suspect that a computer would have scored better, since
a) no way you can translate "erogatore" (dispenser) with "bomb", it's not like it's a often used word with 1000 different nuances, there is only ONE use and I would never use that word in everyday life
b) why the hell did they translate (ok, ok, in the loose meaming of the verb) a past participle with an infinitive?
Dunno.

If you are that stupid that you cannot use a gasoline dispender and waste 70$, maybe you shouldnt be traveling.

In portuguese, at least in brasil, instructions can come in the infinitive form of the verb. You can use either "insira a nota..." (insert) or "inserir a nota..." (to insert). The first one is a little less polite, since it sounds a little bit like an order while the other one seems more like a sugestion.

Michael: actually, Catherine had been in Italy for nearly a year and spoke almost-fluent Italian. She was a more than qualified traveler (I'd been there for 3 or 4 months and could get by just fine).

The problem is just that the pumps work very differently from the US. We put in a 50 euro note and dispensed a tiny amount of gas -- but thought we were failing. Somebody (probably me) hit "cancel", which spits out the balance onto a tiny receipt. So we them had a receipt worth 49.50 of gas in Perugia. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and to cash in the receipt we'd have had to wait until the weekday. And our house was a couple of hours away from Perugia. We took the receipt back and hoped to use it at another Agip station, but they don't allow that. So: 50 euro down the drain.

Aliosha: to their credit, I've heard someone say that the British actually refer to gas pumps as "bombs". Who knows if that's true -- either way, it still sounds pretty funny to me.

Funny mangling of languages, a word-by-word dictionary lookup would have given better results. The Italian text also gives a phone number to call for assistance, I wouldn't expect to get to talk to an English speaker there tho', good luck with your 49.50 E refund.

I'm British and I can confirm that we do NOT refer to gas pumps as "bombs". We usually call them "Petrol Pumps".

Well, scratch that theory then.

"Select the wanted bomb"?!? The hell kinda gas pumps do they have over there?

What about learning itlian before spending 70$ like a moron ?

Sigh. As I mentioned, we had one very competent Italian speaker with us. It didn't matter. The interface was not intuitive, the instructions unclear, and the buttons largely unlabeled (in Italian or otherwise).

Let me ask you a question: what about being less of a jerk?

Hmmm.... Nice petrol pump. Surely everybody knows how to use a petrol pump anyway, and if they don't, what are they doing in a foreign country?

In Italy, gas containers are often referred to as 'bombole', which translates to a sort of slangish cutesy synonym for bomb, but it does not mean the same thing. Much how the same word in English can have multiple definitions. Like the word 'wind' for example, as in 'a heavy wind storm' versus 'I wind my way down the stairs.'

The thing to know, is that a 'bombola' is used more commonly to describe smaller, portable gas containers such as a propane or a helium tank, but I'm guessing that is where the reference of 'selecting your bomb' comes from.

I always thought BoingBoing had a relatively sophisticated, sensitive, geekerati-type readership, but maybe that's just because they don't have comments on the site so you can't see what dumbasses some of the readers can be.

I disagree with the childish comment about being too stupid to operate an Italian gas pump.

Me and my family attempted to operate one of these things for ten minutes with no success - they are infuriatingly absurd devices. Try the auto-pumps in Switzerland. Much, much nicer.

I disagree with the childish comment about being too stupid to operate an Italian gas pump.

Me and my family attempted to operate one of these things for ten minutes with no success

Well I imagine if you'd admit to having been in that situation, you'd probably disagree with it.. :)

I suspect that where they wrote bomb they thought they were writing bowser... Interestingly, when I went to check the spelling it doesn't appear at dictionary.com although good o'Google came through. From the hits it shows the usage seems to have fallen away in the rest of the English speaking world although its still pretty common here in Oz.

E.

Maybe it is an attempt to conserve fuel. Every hour you stand there doumbfounded in front of the pump is an hour you are not driving.

hi. I'm italian and i'm thinking this is ashamed. I'm sorry for this.
roberto

hi. I'm italian and i'm thinking this is ashamed. I'm sorry for this.
roberto

Bomba means pump in italian, spanish, and other latin based languages. Look up the derivation/root of the word pump and you will see how english transformed the meaning of the word into 'pump'.
Of course you do not need to travel with all volumes of the oxford english dictionary to visit europe so lets just say the joke was well worth it and downright hilarious.
PLeasse don't ask me how spy got into the instructions maybe this must be part of the Da Vinci Code.