What do translators do when they come across something that only makes sense when one realizes the joke at hand?
Good question! Incidentally, one of the popular examples given when you want to demonstrate the importance of context and analysis in translation is just two words long:
Time flies.
This works as "Time flies (when you're having fun)" or as "Time flies (with a stopwatch)." Accordingly, the translation will differ radically, but you must know the context. In language, "time flies" is a bit like the rabbit-duck illusion known from the visual arts.
It seems that the copywriters at the ad agency used by German airline Condor were fooling around one day and hit on "Wir lieben Fliegen" as the new corporate slogan. Personally, I'm not sure that it's 100% successful. They want it to mean "We love flies" / "We love flying", but grammatically it works only for the first meaning, not the second (properly, that should be "Wir lieben das Fliegen"). If "Wir lieben Fliegen" were a rabbit-duck-visual, only the rabbit would look lifelike, and you'd have to squint really hard to make the duck show :)
To drive the point home, they show a fly on every advertisement. I don't know about you, but flies are not my favorite animals. Not to gross you out, but think about what they eat!
And how did Condor's high-powered ad team translate the German slogan (and the fly visual) into English? Have a look... and judge for yourself how successful they were.
The lesson, if there is a lesson, is that word-play often does not travel well across a language barrier but arrives worse for the wear. Frequently you're better off starting from scratch and building something different for every market.
Edit to add a question: When PET soft-drink bottles first came out, the German industry association launched a billboard campaign showing a PET bottle with a single word below it: Unkaputtbar. How would you translate this neologism (which I loved, btw) into English? Answer in the comments below, please.
Edit #2: O.K., so despite my pleas for the context around und alles isst gut
, the Opening Poster (OP) has not been back to supply it. However, DuckDuckGo decided to be my friend today and gave me a website called genussprojekt.at
as the first hit. Clicking on it takes me to a webpage containing nothing but a Shockwave Flash movie, which my trusty NoScript extension protects me from loading automatically. Bad idea, who is their website designer? Anyway, the search engine quotes this excerpt from their webpage:
Vom Frühstück [sic] bis Abends [sic] unsere Gäste zu verwöhnen, Ihnen [sic] Genuss zu bereiten und ein einzigartiger [sic] Ambiente zu schaffen, war [sic] die Idee und der Name Genussprojekt ...
Even that brief excerpt makes it clear that you are dealing with functional illiterates (which says nothing about their ability as chefs, of course). So, what should you do if as the translator you are requested to give them an English-language equivalent? Why, give them what they ask for!
Eats all good.
Does that make you cringe? It should, but what do you care. The client will be happy with it. That's a quick 500 euros, and you can console yourself by spending some of that money to buy a DVD of Idiocracy.