Off topic: Fun with Google Translate Thread poster: Ricki Farn
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Ricki Farn
Germany
Local time: 23:11
English to German
While watching videos about treasure hunting, including metal detecting, I came across a Dutch YouTube user with the username "Niet lullen maar graven". I had a vague idea of what that might mean in German, so I decided to use Google Translate to verify. It turns out that case matters:
The translation means: "Do not dig male genitals"
The translation means: "Do not dig, but dig".
Well, I suppose that was a successful treasure hunt I had in Google Translate today. What have you dug up?
PS Unless I'm mistaken, "Niet lullen maar graven" means "Do not indulge in idle talk, but dig".
Edit: Heh, it works in English, too - if I set the target language to English, I get "do not dig dicks" and "Do not dig but dig" respectively. This might indicate that the translation from Dutch to German was done via English. Possibly.
[Edited at 2018-12-31 20:46 GMT]
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The only difference I saw was in the capitalization of the first word! Confused.
| | | | | English as an interlanguage for Machine Translation systems | Jan 1, 2019 |
Ricki Farn wrote:
This might indicate that the translation from Dutch to German was done via English. Possibly.
This has been confirmed indeed! As a user of MT you will always have to keep this in mind (e.g. to interpret funny translations as 'Seehunde' for seals (instead of Dichtungen).
BTW: How about this attempt from DeepL?
Note that adding an exclamation mark (and using proper uppercase at the start of a sentence) can make a difference.
| | | | Ricki Farn
Germany
Local time: 23:11
English to German
TOPIC STARTER
Hans, that is a new low - by indiscriminately moving "Schwänze" from the noun position in the sentence to that of the verb, the translation has become "Do not play truant, but dig".
At least I could see where the dicks came from (it's the Dutch noun "lul", plural "lullen"), but "playing truant" just results from freely skipping from one homograph to another. Have the squirrels taken over DeepL?
I have even found a possible explanation for "do not dig but dig" in Google... See more Hans, that is a new low - by indiscriminately moving "Schwänze" from the noun position in the sentence to that of the verb, the translation has become "Do not play truant, but dig".
At least I could see where the dicks came from (it's the Dutch noun "lul", plural "lullen"), but "playing truant" just results from freely skipping from one homograph to another. Have the squirrels taken over DeepL?
I have even found a possible explanation for "do not dig but dig" in Google Translate. If this entry from Reverso is part of the corpus data:
"Super, goede manier om je eruit te lullen.
Awesome. Way to dig yourself out." [meaning: to talk yourself out of a tricky situation]
then the AI might have assumed a semantic cluster around the idea of "dig" and jumped to conclusions. ▲ Collapse
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Ricki Farn
Germany
Local time: 23:11
English to German
TOPIC STARTER
I was looking for an English explanation for the German tradition of "Weiberfastnacht", which literally translates to "women-fasting-night", i.e. women celebrating one of the nights before Lent, or their gender-specific share of the German carnival. What I got was this:
We should start a collection. Please share yours!
Edit: Just adding more words to the search string changes its translation, just as different capitalization or punctuation do:
I don't think Google Translate will take over our jobs any time soon.
[Edited at 2019-01-05 18:59 GMT]
| | | | Jeff Whittaker 
United States
Local time: 17:11
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
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