DailyDirt: Automated English Translations Are Fun

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Jan 22nd 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Automated language translations have made some pretty big advances over the years, but sometimes the results are hilarious because they're so wrong. We don't mean to pick on Google Translate here -- since it's just one of many automated solutions for translating foreign languages -- but automated Engrish can be pretty funny.

Google has been working on translating languages in YouTube video clips for a few years, offering a very useful feature of video transcripts. It's not exactly a perfect universal translator, but something may be better than nothing. [url]
Call Me Maybe translated into 14 foreign languages and then back into English... This is madness.. numerous statements of my mobile number... [url]
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air's theme song was run through 64 translations by cdza. Now this is a story all about how... automated translation doesn't preserve meanings. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: call me maybe, fresh prince of bel air, funny, speech technology, translation
Companies: google

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Anonymous Coward, 22 Jan 2013 @ 6:07pm

Fresh Prince lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM5-i9NH0tM

The original version, for reference.
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cosmicrat (profile), 22 Jan 2013 @ 9:33pm

A good laugh
It was pretty funny a few years ago when the translators weren't quite as good. Find a porn website, preferably one with a lot of verbal descriptions of the videos. Run it through auto translate into Japanese, then into German, then back to English. I know, I'm easily amused.
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Wally (profile), 23 Jan 2013 @ 1:16am

This article proves two things:

1. American Nuance English is by far the hardest language to learn to speak...let alone program.

2. Best known example of lovalized cultural memes and inside jokes do not translate well from region to region..I still have no idea what the joke is behind the big ear is in Japan.

In regards to the second thing I learned from the article, Nintendo had to localize almost every game they made for the NES and Super NES. Most notably Super Mario RPG was localized to make sure the Bowser sprites didn't flip the players the bird after each victory. Then again they had our symbolism wrong when it came to Earthbound...no red crosses on the hospitals as the cited they were being PC about it.
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another mike (profile), 23 Jan 2013 @ 8:17am

someone had to do it
Madness? This is Sparta!
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Gwiz (profile), 23 Jan 2013 @ 11:36am

I watched the Fresh Prince video when Mike put the link out on Twitter.

Makes me wonder if Mandarin reruns of Fresh Prince are titled "The Apricot Emperor's Son of Bel-Air"
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