Estonian anthem by Google - no worse than that? :)) Oh, well ...
There is another rather patriotic song, starting Kaunistagem Eesti
kojad ... etc. (roughly Adorn Estonia's homes ...). People tested it,
in the first happy days when Estonian became a Google language, for
some reason with Estonian to Russian. And got the equivalent of
"Strangle Estonian Houses" ...
Actually, it probably wan't, isn't, an evil plot, or not as simple as
that at least. If you feed GT "kaunistagem ..." (common k) it gives a
reasonable translation..
BUT: what nasty texts have the GT computers got hold of, to come up
with the strangulation proposal?
On 28 Dec 2009, 21:07, Harald Korneliussen wrote:
> I looked at the translations of some more national anthems,
> particularly of those for which the translator can be assumed to be
> based on a small corpus. In general, I have to concede that the Irish
> have had some terrible luck - most translations aren't as bad as that
> one.
>
> However, I still found more evidence that odd translations of national
> anthems are result of machine error, not malice. In the translation of
> the Icelandic national anthem "Ó, guð vors lands! Ó, lands vors guð!"
> to English (which is pretty awful, by the way), it for some reason
> translates some full lines with "Hiduplah!" Since I never head that
> "English" word before, I googled it, and found out it means "Long
> live". In Indonesian. As in the Indonesian national anthem "Hiduplah
> Indonesia Raya" - long live great Indonesia.
>
> So, Seán, do some submitters have a very odd sense of humor? Or will
> you admit that the translator can come up with weirder and more
> surprising translations than you thought? :-D
>
> (Also, I kind of hear echoes of Rick Astley in GT's translation of the
> last verse of the Estonian anthem:
>
> Watch the Sun God
> my beloved homeland!
> He either protect you
> and take up a lot of blessing,
> never gonna do that for you,
> my dear homeland!)
