Thursday, February 07, 2008

Google as a second language...

Reading foreign translations of your own webpage can be interesting at times. I'm pretty sure that "I'm just sayin'" does not directly parse to "Je suis juste sayin '."

It's so hard for software to handle idiom. As every geek knows, if the Redshirt says "Your mother wore army boots," the Klingon's translator spits out "Your maternal parent wore the footgear of a soldier," and he takes it as a compliment.

5 comments:

  1. I remember a Wired article on this topic from around 'ninety and five. Supposedly, translating the Sesame Street theme into Klingon and back yields:

    Day of the daytime star
    The clouds are filled with dread and forced to flee


    Verification word: tufoixl, a special lubricant you're supposed to use on your HK...

    ...except you can't get it, civilian.

    HP. Because you suck. And we hate you.

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  2. tam, imagine how the Constitution, notably 2A, would recipher..."that does not compute!"...

    haven't seen "parse" in that context before, but do know that what used to be a perfectly good verb was sullied forever by that tv preacher, brother bill clinton.

    formerly fairly obscure, the word became ubiquitous in the blather of b.b.c.'s media sycophants, and it will never again be a component of my own writing or speech; sad...jtc

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  3. One of my favorite rainy day activites is to hop on Alta Vists and translate somethinf into Japanese and then back to English. The results are nearly always...off. Sometimes very off. I ran the Four Rules through that wringer quite some time ago and got back something written in lolcat by autistic centipedes.

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  4. I tried that English to Japanese back to English just now for fun.

    I put in "Star Trek" and got back "Sulu, Master of Navigation."

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