{"id":313,"date":"2009-02-20T00:01:46","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T08:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=313"},"modified":"2009-02-19T22:17:51","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T06:17:51","slug":"lost-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"Lost in Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Internet, sounding like a polyglot is easy. The question you have to ask yourself, especially when you don’t know what polyglot<\/em> means, is do you want to sound like a polyglot. (Hint: You do.)
\n
\nA polyglot is someone who uses more than one language. On the Internet, being a polyglot is easy thanks to a boatload of translation tools. Those tools take a word, sentence, diatribe, or entire web page, and translate it into a foreign tongue.<\/p>\n

The first translation tool I used was Babelfish<\/a>, provided by AltaVista, but now available from Yahoo. These days, however, I prefer to use the Google Language Tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The translation web pages work simply: Type in a word, sentence, or whatever. Choose the source language (such as English) and then the translation language. The result is, well, supposedly the same text in that other language.<\/p>\n

I use the Google Language Tool all the time, often to translate email I get from foreign readers. It helps me get the gist of what they’re saying, and though I often try to translate my reply into the other language, I know that such a thing doesn’t often meet with success. That’s because most translations cannot be literal, and that’s all the computer is presently capable of doing.<\/p>\n

There is a certain flavor to a language, a certain way to say things. You have to know the language to know intent, and not just take thoughts at their word-for-word meaning.<\/p>\n

Examples of such mistranslations are common on the Internet. A famous one appeared at last summer’s Olympics in China:<\/p>\n

\"2647542165_ed1c7f9446\"<\/p>\n

The folks who owned the restaurant wanted to cater to foreign tourists, most of whom can’t read Chinese. The Chinese characters read kan-ting<\/em>, which translates directly into our word canteen<\/em>, or a place to get food. Regrettably, and to much comic relief, the restaurant owners obviously didn’t reverse translate the result, which was Translate server error<\/code>. Still I think that makes for an interesting name for an eatery.<\/p>\n

It reads even better in French: Traduire erreur de serveur<\/em><\/p>\n

So enjoy playing with other languages. Give your text some foreign flare, and mislead innocent others into thinking that you’re a master of French or German \u2014 or Chinese! Do keep in mind, however, to check that reverse translation just in case!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Internet, sounding like a polyglot is easy. The question you have to ask yourself, especially when you don’t know what polyglot means, is do you want to sound like a polyglot. (Hint: You do.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}