Helloh, Bud: Why You Shouldn't Use Translation Engine to Address the Foreign Minister

Posted by Alex in Everything Else on November 10, 2007 at 2:05 am


A group of Israeli journalists created a diplomatic row when they decided to use a translation engine to send an email to the Dutch Consulate. They wanted to discuss an upcoming visit to the Netherlands, but ended up asking the Dutch Foreign Minister impolite questions about his mother!

"Helloh bud, Enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian, and on relational Israel Holland," began the e-mail. It continued with five nearly incomprehensible questions, and several other mentions of "mother."

The article at Jerusalem Post went on to describe how the journalists used babelfish.com to translate the letter, but this appeared to be a mistake in itself: babelfish doesn’t translate Hebrew: Link – via The Register


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COMMENT

5 comments to "Helloh, Bud: Why You Shouldn't Use Translation Engine to Address the Foreign Minister"

  1. yaffa
    November 10th, 2007 at 5:51 am

    They probably meant babylon instead of babelfish

    http://www.babylon.com/definition/Hebrew_language/http://www.babylon.c om/definition/Hebrew_language/

  2. k
    November 10th, 2007 at 7:11 am

    lmao. I learned from that mistake years ago

  3. anon
    November 10th, 2007 at 9:42 am

    Saw this posted on Slashdot (by the world's most unreliable moderator), the whole thing stinks of a made-up story. Why are there no names? There's not even a site at babelfish.com...it's babelfish.altavista.com. How could they not be bothered to even "fact-check" that simple detail?

  4. blo
    November 12th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    true or not, this is the funniest thing I've read in weeks.

  5. Brent
    November 15th, 2007 at 1:39 am

    The journalists should have read my post from two weeks ago that talks about another international row possibly caused by poor online translators. I also show that Babel Fish is much poorer than Google's alternative:
    http://brentblog.typepad.com/brentblog/2007/10/they-are-shaken.html


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