On Wednesday, 26 September 2018 at 12:57:21 UTC, ShadoLight wrote:
On Wednesday, 26 September 2018 at 02:12:07 UTC, Ali Çehreli
wrote:
On 09/24/2018 08:17 AM, 0xEAB wrote:
> - Non-idiomatic translations of tech terms [2]
[snip]
English message was something like "No memory left" and the
German translation was "No memory on the left hand side" :)
Ali
Not sure if this was not just some urban legend, but there was
a delightful story back in the late 80s/early 90s about the
early translation programs. They were in particular not very
good at idiomatic translations, so people would play with
idiomatic expressions from language X (say english) to language
Y, and then back from Y to X - and then see what was returned.
Apparently the expression "the spirit is willing but the flesh
is weak" translated to Russian and back was returned by one
such program as:
"The vodka is good but the meat is rotten!"
In case you missed it, this was well spreaded in the tech news
last month or so:
https://translate.google.fr/?hl=fr#so/en/ngoo%20m%20goon%20goob%20goo%20goo%20goo%20mgoo%20goo%20goo%20goo%20goo%20goo%20m%20goo
Still progress to do.
