Comments on: BlahblahFish

By: Jodie

Jodie — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:42:20 +0000

This definitely illustrates that whenever you’ve got an important document that you need translated, you simply can’t rely on online tools. We have to deal with a lot of foreign documentation and we always bring in a professional translation agency to do it.

I tried this with “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” and the Danish came up with:

A long time ago , to a white-tie far , far away

Could have been worse. But the Slovenian:

“however long without , within however Via Lactea well away , ulteriorly”

Downright incomprehensible.

By: AT

AT — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:23:01 +0000

I tried the classic movie quote:

Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

Croatian
Carpel diem. Possess day , boys. Fabricate yours livestock specific.
(Umm, okay)

Japanese:
Diem of Carpe. Day, grasp the boy. Make your life abnormal.
(Hentai da!)

Italian:
Diem di Carpe. Grippi the day, boys. It renders your screw extraordinary.
(!!!)
http://www.blahblahfish.com/mangle/show/123437

Italian:

By: Joshua Cole

Joshua Cole — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:13:06 +0000

Was it just me or was the Romanian translation about William Shattner and meant to be read by Shatner as well? It sure. Seemed like it to me.

By: vero4902

vero4902 — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:52:48 +0000

My friends and I started doing the manual translations when we were obsessed with Engrish… they didn’t update as much as we would have liked, so we had to get our bad translations somewhere else!

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:30:25 +0000

I remember this same sort of thing, a few years ago, with a site called “Lost in Translation”- it does it via several different languages in Babelfish. I used to play a game with folks on some boards, posting the lost-in-translation of a song lyric, which they’d in turn decipher back to the original lyric.

http://tashian.com/multibabel is the site.

By: Gauldar

Gauldar — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:09:46 +0000

Those Welsh and their ‘ heartburn, somebody send them some Tums!

By: sparge

sparge — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:44:28 +0000

Idil, that’s the reason these are so enjoyable!

By: Idil

Idil — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:22:32 +0000

This isn’t accurate, at least not for the turkish one. Some of the words are words we wouldnt use at all for the words that I typed in english, no matter the context. (haha try to make sense of that sentence first)

By: Ando

Ando — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:13:59 +0000

OMG… Chinese version is right on the money. Perfect!

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:44:37 +0000

Language shapes thought. Linguistic determinism.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:28:03 +0000

Russian-

‘The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten.’

By: sparge

sparge — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:48:13 +0000

I tried the classic neatorama comment:

Old man standing tall.
Old woman bending willow.
Friction burns them both.

Here are a couple of the translations:

Portuguese:
Aged man who is high.
Willow of fold of the adult woman.
The friction burns them both.

Korean:

Height stands on a large scale to be, the old person.
The old person the willow which bends.
Rubbing ignites the (thing) two which will listen all.

Croatian:

Old man stoppage lofty.
Crone flexure willow.
Limature incinerate them two.

Norwegian:

Greybeard stand high.
Ancient woman bending savage.
Friction burn her both.

Slovenian:
pater whack virgate.
old woman wrapping willy.
tussle sideboard them the two.

(This is great! leave off the last two words and it’s even still a haiku!)

Welsh:

Old man standing ‘ heartburn continue.
‘ heartburn old female bending willow.
Friction burns have gone both.

By: mouser

mouser — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:37:22 +0000

In 2004 I wrote a free program (for MS Windows) that does this; the latest version has tons of options and is still available here:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/boomerang/index.html

-mouser

By: Cath

Cath — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:21:58 +0000

I love this, it proves how much we translators are needed

By: DOuglas2

DOuglas2 — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:37:44 +0000

I would be careful to know the original context of the “english” phrase before I called any of the retranslations “good summaries”. Lest I reveal how little I know of my own cultural heritage.

By: yo

yo — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:46:12 +0000

The reason why the chinese translation did such a nice job defining the idiom may be due to the huge effort they put into updating their translation software prior to the olympics. There was a massive effort to get rid of chingrish statements in public – many of which were due to literally translated idioms. so it’s reasonable to guess that part of the fix-it effort went into defining massive numbers of english idioms into understandable chinese definitions. Hence, the nice, succinct phrase.

I could be wrong.

By: yo

yo — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:43:17 +0000

The slovenian sounds like something Sarah Palin would say.

By: Chiroptera

Chiroptera — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:29:39 +0000

“Alice fell down the rabbit hole.” turned into “Alice criminal under the. rabbit cholera.” using Romanian.

By: Dyslexic boB

Dyslexic boB — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:24:50 +0000

Ha! “Do not want!” turns into “Want!” using either of the Chinese options.

By: Gauldar

Gauldar — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:20:11 +0000

Reminds me of those stories where companies first went into Asian countries and displayed advertising. I think Pepsi advertised in China with ‘Come alive! You’re in the Pepsi generation’, and become something along the lines of ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead’. KFC in Japan with “Finger licking good” became “Bite your fingers off”. There is also a myth that the translation of the name Coca-Cola became ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse flattened with wax’, but I think that was mostly from shop owners translation of the product.

By: Walaka

Walaka — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:09:10 +0000

At least a few of the dictionaries that this program uses must have some complete idiomatic expressions listed. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” run through Czech came back as “Better an egg today than a hen tomorrow.” This gets across the sense of the original expression, but is a completely different saying that would not have been generated by close-but-no-cigar translating. The Chinese result from the Neato example looks like this, as well.

Direct correspondence aside, I noticed that the Romance languages seem to translate more accurately than the others.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:02:14 +0000

Yea- The Chinese one summarized your proverb pretty well!

By: Gail Pink

Gail Pink — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:54:18 +0000

“The Spirit is William” – LOVE IT!

By: JenDiggity

JenDiggity — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:53:18 +0000

Also: I used to do the same thing manually on Babelfish for fun when I was bored. Good times!

By: JenDiggity

JenDiggity — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:52:21 +0000

I like how the Chinese version not only says the same thing, but does it more succinctly.