There’s this famous Welsh mistranslation.
Not sure what you mean. Google “batteries quebec” and you get lots of hits to stores selling batteries, doing business in French.
It’s a standard term. Frontage road - Wikipedia
It was a joke. Texas has an inordinate number and length of frontage roads, so an unfamiliar person coming from somewhere without many could be gulled by the joke.
In continental French, batteries are “piles.”
Some context.
Many years ago, I was working in a music store after having live for a year in Strasbourg, France. One day a Québecois family came in and I helped them, in French. They bought a Walkman, and at the register I asked, “Vous voulez les piles pour le Walkman?”
Confused looks. “Les quoi?”
“Les piles, comme ça,” and I pulled a package of batteries from in front of the register. “Ahhh, ceux sont les batteries!” the mother said to me, smiling. “Mais non,” I said, “ceux sont les batteries,” pointing to an electronic drum set on the shelves next to the register kiosk.
Québecois batterie = drums in continental French, thus the word play involving Neil Peart.
At a prior company, we were not client-facing, but we kept hearing about this German client of ours called “Antwort” who wanted various things done.
Turns out “Antwort:” is just the German equivalent of “Re:” in the subject lines of emails, so all requests would come in with subjects “Antwort: Do some thing” and people would assume that “Antwort” was the client name it was for.
17-year old me giggled my way through Europe ordering this at the cafe.
The Spanish word pinche literally means a kitchen worker.
In some Spanish-speaking countries, it implies low class, and is considered an insult.
In Mexico and the southern U.S., it is insulting enough to be considered a swear word.
In Spain, it carries no animus, and there are a lot of restaurants named “El Pinche”. This causes a lot of snickering among tourists from North America.
On vacation road trips circa 1965 my father would tell the story of the “Indian brave” who got separated from the band and was lost. Thus all the road signs advising “Watch For Falling Rock.”
Maybe this is my bilingualism coming through but I’d probably say “pile” for one of the small batteries like in a watch, but “batterie” for a AA type. It’s clearly an anglicism.
Batteries is also a drum kit, and the term for a set of pots and pans.
That little ditty was also part of my father’s road commentary when I was growing up.
Coming from the “collection of similar pieces of equipment” meaning of “battery” (where the electrical meaning is a battery of individual cells).
My favourite multilingual chuckle is the fact that I learned “baguette” as a style of bread, but only realised that it just meant “wand” later, after reading about drummers hitting their battery with baguettes, or fairy godmothers casting spells with their magic baguettes.
And even though, in English, a “baton” is a small, wand-like stick, in French, it’s a staff.
I learned about that from watching another grad student in the same office playing Diablo, with French language localization.
Or you could use “verge”, which can mean stick or cane - or something more anatomical.
There’s a large German electronics manufacturer by that name. They must endure all sorts of juvenile humor when they sell in the US.
Are you referring to the « Gentilhomme Huissier de la Verge Noire » ? 
(Senate of Canada apparently couldn’t take the giggling from teenagers in school trips and now call it le “Bâton noir”. No sense of tradition!)
That would depend on the circumstances. As it happens, at Westminster it’s currently a Lady Usher, which renders the point moot. So to speak..
Apparently the Norman conquerers in England imported their own ranks of nobility, except for “Count” (keeping the English Earl), due to the similarity to an old English term
Is that the reason? I had always just assumed that the local Earls were just really stubborn.
Hardly. They were dispossessed and replaced by Normans. It was a total colonisation.