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Google Translate Game

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by NoMoShocks, Sep 14, 2007.

  1. NoMoShocks

    NoMoShocks Electrical Engineer

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    Last evening, my daughter told me, guess what dad, in spanish, there is no word for knee. I figured there is a good chance this could be true, becuase I have known of other situations like this.

    Several years ago, a Cuban friend of mine was talking about 100 miles per hour in Spanish. I know a little Sapnish, but I cannot follow it at all when it is spoken very quickly. All of a sudden, I hear the word "toolbox" and then the Spanish continued. So I asked him, why the word toolbox in with all that Spanish and he said, there is no Spanish word for toolbox. It can only be translated as a phrase like "box of tools".

    Anyway, today I went to Google Translate to confirm if there is no Spanish word for knee. It gave me "rodilla".

    To confirm if this is a direct translation, I entered "rodilla" to translate from Spanish to English and it gives "it rolls".

    So apparently, there is no direct single word Spanish translation of knee that Google translate knows anyway.

    Sometimes, the context of a sentence is very critical, so I entered:
    "I hope she didn't hurt her knee to badly when she tripped over the toolbox."

    Then I asked for English to Spanish and it gave me:
    Espero que ella no lastimara su rodilla a gravemente cuando ella disparó sobre la caja de herramientas.

    Sounds reasonable, but then to check it, I cut and paste thatt back to the input entry box and ask for Spanish to English. This is when I thought of the game. It gave me:
    I hope that it did not hurt her knee to seriously when it shot on the toolbox.

    I have no idea why “to†in “to seriously†only got one “oâ€.

    Anyway, the game is similar to the old game “Telephone Chain†or "Gossip" where 5 – 10 people stand in a row. The first person whispers a sentence to the second person and then each whispers it on to the next until it gets to the end of the line. Then the last person speaks it out load and everyone laughs at the resulting nonsense.

    Instead, use Google Translate to translate a phrase from English to French, then French to German, then German to English. Here goes, starting again with:

    "I hope she didn't hurt her knee to badly when she tripped over the toolbox."

    French = “J'espère qu'elle n'a pas blessé son genou à mal quand elle s'est déclenchée au-dessus de la boîte à outils.â€

    German = “Ich hoffe, daß sie ihr übelknie nicht verletzt hat, wenn sie sich über der Kiste an Werkzeugen ausgelöst hat.â€

    English = “I hope that she does not ill-kneel it hurt, if she released herself over the crate at tools.â€

    Released herself? That's discusting!


    Here is another path going from Engish to German to French to English.

    "I hope she didn't hurt her knee to badly when she tripped over the toolbox."

    German =„I Hoffnung verletzte sie ihr Knie nicht zu schlecht, als sie auslöste über dem Toolbox.“

    French = “I l'espoir ne l'a pas trop mal blessée lui genoux, comme elle a déclenché sur le Toolbox.â€

    English = I the hope too badly did not wound it to him knees, like it started on Toolbox.



    This reminds me of Mad Libs. Anyone remember those. It is a paper based game where words in a short story are replaced by blank lines that are identified as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. One player asks the other for nouns, verbs, adjectives and fills in each blank. Then he reads the resulting story and you end up with things like "I bumped into a stinky lady on the bus with a toilet in her lap.", but it is a longer one page story that is totally funny.

    I bet you could play a PriusChat version of Mad Libs where all nouns, verbs and adjectives must be filled in with PriusChat relevant topics. You would get stuff like "I bumped into a hybrid lady on the Navigation System with an engine block heater in her lap.


    If anyone know of more words without Spanish, French or German equivalents, you can make up a phrase and post it here with Google Translations, or leave it to a future poster to do the translating.
     
    #1 NoMoShocks, Sep 14, 2007
  2. Danny Hamilton

    Danny Hamilton Active Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(NoMoShocks @ Sep 14 2007, 02:45 PM) [snapback]512645[/snapback]</div>
    Um, perhaps because you only gave "to" in "to badly" one "o"?
     
    #2 Danny Hamilton, Sep 14, 2007
  3. galaxee

    galaxee mostly benevolent

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    wording is vastly different across languages... and google cannot pick that up. don't bother with google translate, head straight for the spanish to english dictionary.

    the accepted spanish word for knee is rodilla.
    rodillo is a roller, a rolling pin, etc.
    to cause something to roll is not rodilla, but rodar. and none of the conjugated forms becomes rodilla OR rodillo.
    except in the case of rolling dough, in which case it's pasar el rodillo. pass the roller over it.
    that leaves the only definition of rodilla (and i just looked at a number of different spanish to english online dictionaries) as a knee.

    :) i suggest larousse for a good spanish to english dictionary. i got mine many years ago.
     
    #3 galaxee, Sep 14, 2007
  4. HolyPotato

    HolyPotato Junior Member

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    This reminds me of an old article on "babelfish invariance":

    http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~copeland/work/babel.html

    [I can't remember if that's the original one I read, but it looks pretty close, and has the "We like reading these out loud in thick, stage accents." line that I remember]
     
    #4 HolyPotato, Sep 14, 2007
  5. NoMoShocks

    NoMoShocks Electrical Engineer

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Danny Hamilton @ Sep 14 2007, 01:01 PM) [snapback]512650[/snapback]</div>
    Yes, that could very well be the reason.
    Garbage In, Garbage Out.

    Good Gramar In:
    "I hope she didn't hurt her knee too badly when she tripped over the toolbox."

    “Esperanza de I ella no lastimó su rodilla demasiado gravemente cuando ella disparó sobre la caja de herramientas.â€

    Comes back with high quality Yoda Speaking:
    “Hope of I she did not hurt its knee too much seriously when it shot on the toolbox.â€
     
    #5 NoMoShocks, Sep 14, 2007
  6. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Computer translation is a joke. The best translation programs are unable to determine from context which of several possible translation for a given word is the correct one.

    "I drank water from a spring."
    "I'm going to Canada next spring."

    In the above two sentences, a computer will not know that in one case a spring is a place where water comes out of the ground (manantial in Spanish) or the season of the year (primavera in Spanish). And since nearly every word in every language has multiple meanings (with the possible exception of artificial languages like Esperanto) computers are worthless for translating.

    As galaxee correctly points out, rodilla is knee in Spanish. (I speak fairly fluent Spanish.)

    Even human translators can only approximate the sense of most of what anybody says or writes in another language. Often a word has a meaning but also shades of meaning, and in another language the word with the same principal meaning will have different shades, or there will not be a word that captures the sense. Even the tone of an utterance will change its meaning.

    "You dog," can mean very different things. It can be an insult or a compliment, depending on tone. Add to that that in one culture "dog" may have very positive connotations, while in another it may have very insulting connotations.

    The lack of a useful subjunctive in English makes it very hard for English speakers to learn the subjunctive in languages such as Spanish that use it, but it also makes it impossible to translate a whole category of Spanish utterances in a manner that really captures the sense, though it is possible to get the general idea across.

    I have no idea where your daughter got the idea that Spanish had no word for knee. Probably from one of those lists of interesting "facts" that circulate on the internet. But it is true that many objects that get a single word in one language, need a 2- or 3-word phrase in another. I do believe that "caja de herramientas" is the phrase for toolbox. Note that in this case, the English "toolbox" really is two words, but that in English we often run two words together to make one word. German does this even more. I don't think Spanish does it much, other than with the word "para" (for) as in parabrisas (windshield) paraguas (umbrella) etc.
     
    #6 daniel, Sep 14, 2007
  7. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party"

    English to Dutch:
    Nu is de tijd voor alle goede mensen om aan de hulp van hun partij te komen.
    (translated back to English: Now the time for all good people is to the aid of their party come.)

    Dutch to French:
    Maintenant, le temps pour tous bons gens est à venir à l'aide de leur parti.
    (translated beck to English: Now, time for all good people is to be come using their party.)

    French to German:
    Jetzt ist die Zeit für alle guten Leute, mittels ihrer Partei zu kommen.

    And German to English:
    Now is the time for all good people to come by means of its party.
     
    #7 TonyPSchaefer, Sep 14, 2007
  8. samiam

    samiam Antipodean Prius Poster

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    Do you remember the famous translation
    "The vodka is good but the meat is rotten"?

    (English => Russian ==> English
    The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak)
     
    #8 samiam, Sep 17, 2007
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