Sunday, June 13, 2010

Yes, I'm bored

1. English:
I'm going to have some fun with the translator. I will translate this passage through several different languages and see what the output is when I get back to English.
I'll post each step along the way.

2. Polish/Polski:
Mam zamiar się zabawić z tłumaczem. Przetłumaczę to przejazd przez kilka różnych językach i zobaczyć, co wynik jest, gdy wrócę na angielski.
Ja po każdym etapie pracy.

3. Danish/Dansk:
Jeg har tænkt mig at have lidt sjov med en tolk. Oversæt passagen gennem flere forskellige sprog, og se, hvad resultatet er, når jeg kommer tilbage til engelsk.
Jeg arbejder på alle stadier.

4. Italian/Italiano:
Io vado a divertirmi un po 'con un interprete. Tradurre il passaggio attraverso diverse lingue e vedere che cosa il risultato è quando torno in inglese.
Io lavoro in tutte le fasi.

5. Finnish/Suomi:
Aion pitää hauskaa "kanssa tulkin. Käännä läpiajo eri kieliä ja katso, mitä tulos on, kun saan Englanti.
Olen töissä kaikissa vaiheissa.

6. Greek/Ελληνικά:
Πάω να έχει τη διασκέδαση "με διερμηνέα. Γυρίστε το πέρασμα μέσα από διαφορετικές γλώσσες και να δούμε ποιο είναι το αποτέλεσμα είναι, όταν έχω στην Αγγλία.
Εργάζομαι σε όλα τα στάδια.

7. Croatian/Hrvatski:
Idem se zabaviti "s tumača. Uključite prolaz kroz različite jezike i vidjeti što ishod je kad sam se u Englesku.
Radim u svim fazama.

8. Hungarian/Magyar:
Megyek szórakozik "a tolmács. Kapcsolja be a folyosón át különböző nyelveken, és mi az eredmény, amikor jöttem Angliába.
Én munka minden fázisában.

9. German/Deutsch:
Ich werde Spaß haben "die Dolmetscherin. Um den Gang in die verschiedenen Sprachen schalten, und was ist das Ergebnis, wenn ich nach England kam.
Ich arbeite auf allen Stufen.

10. Romanian/Română:
Voi avea distractiv ", interpret Pentru a activa coridor în diferite limbi,. Şi ceea ce este rezultatul atunci când am venit în Anglia.
Eu lucrez la toate nivelurile.

11. Back to English:
I'll have fun, "performer To activate corridor in different languages. And what is the result when I came to England.
I work at all levels.

Interesting. I don't know where the corridor came from. If you can speak/understand any of the intermediate steps, let me know your opinion of what it says in that language.

6 comments:

nat said...

Wow, language geekery overload! I love this stuff :-)

Where "corridor" came from isn't too hard to spot: that misunderstanding is potentially there from the start, in "passage". The same ambiguity is retained in the Italian, but the mistake was made before it reached German, because "Gang" can mean corridor, but can't mean a section of text.

The German one is much worse than the Italian (I wonder where "nach England" came from - Hungarian perhaps). The only really glaring mistakes in the Italian are "un interprete" - an interpreter, suggesting a person; Polish is clearly to blame there, directly or indirectly (Danish already has "med en tolk") - and "lavoro" = "I work". Evidently the internet meaning of "post" got lost very quickly, which isn't surprising.

"Steps" is still steps in German, but now with the possible alternative meaning of levels, to which it was obviously reduced in Romanian (nivelurile).

"Performer" is due to the ambiguity of "interpret" in Romanian. "Dolmetscherin" in German is not ambiguous at all, but only means spoken language interpreter - which is another mistake that might have arisen very early: I suspect the Danish "tolk" might only refer to people who, well, talk. I think it's there by Croatian at the latest, as I'd be very surprised if "tumača" is not related to "Dolmetscher" - which is clearly the case with "tolmács" in the next step.

Now just add Japanese and really screw things up.

(word verification: "crock". this amuses me)

Sean said...

I should have noticed that with passage/corridor. It makes sense now.

As for "tumaca" in Croatian, it would mean "translator" because the Polish is "tlumacz" (phonetically, twumach, and the Cro is tumacha) so it's too close to be anything but that, especially in this context.

On close inspection, I think Polish is to blame for assuming that the translator was a person. "Z tlumaczem" means "with the translator" referring to the translator as being a person.
On even closer inspection, I think Polish can be blamed for the corridor/passage mistake as well, the word "przejazd" means a passage in the travelling sense.
Polish isn't guilty of the "in England" error - "wroce na angielski" is definitely "I return to English".

I agree with the Romanian "nivelurile" - it's bound to be from the same root as niveau in French.

Sean said...

Also, I think next time I'll choose a different set of languages (I'll keep Polish and German so that we can keep track of it) but I doubt I'll go through any Asian character-based scripts. I like to be able to read the words written, and I can read Greek and Cyrillic.
I should have added a Cyrillic in there this time, but I felt with Polish and Croatian, there were enough Slavics already.

Kat said...

As for 'England' in place of 'english', the italian gets it right, but the Croatian doesn't, so it's either finnish or greek, and I suspect Finnish, as Translator tells me 'Englanti' means both 'english' and 'Britain' which is pretty multitalented of it. 'Kun saan Englanti' comes back as 'When I get England'.
The Finnish also seems responsible for the bizarre " that appeared in the first line. How did that happen?
And yes, 'tumac' is a person who translates, either written or spoken.
And it's interesting that the German brought the 'steps' back to Stufen, as several languages before that have a 'phases' word (fasi, faza, etc). But it definitely seems to be the german to romanian that turned it into 'levels'.
Most amusing!
Većina zabavna! (Cro)
Plus de plaisir! (F)
Więcej Fun! (P)
Meer Fun! (NDL)
More Fun!(Portuguese, believe it or not)

Remember Goeff Wilkes' story about the invisible idiot? This reminds me of that.

Sean said...

The " appears first in Finnish, but I wondered if it was a weird way the Finnish translated the 'con from the Italian.
I wonder what the Welsh and Scots would have to say about Englanti meaning "English" and "Britain" in Finnish?

In Greek, "έχω στην Αγγλία (echo stin Agglia)" means "I am in England", whereas "English" would be "Agglika", so they don't have the same issue as Finnish.

nat said...

Of course - 'con is responsible for the ". It might have helped if the ' was actually next to po, which is where it should be - un po' con, not un po 'con. I didn't notice that when I read it, but of course Google Translator can't ignore things like that. po' is short for poco (I think).

Interesting that the "dolmetsch" word in Slavic means both spoken and written translation. Makes me think that German must have got it from Slavic; it's certainly too weird to be originally German. But I just looked it up and it's apparently originally from Turkish (!) "dilmaç", via Hungarian. (The modern Turkish word is different and looks a lot like the Arabic word, which isn't very surprising.)