Weird wit by Google translation technology

I was translating some document from German to English, that had my surname in it.
It got translated to ‘Beesley’, and I immediately thought of Angela Beesley, chair of Wikimedia Advisory Board. I started playing more, and did find, that:

  • French ‘Domas Mituzas’ to English translates as ‘Anthere fall’
  • ‘Mituzas’ in German is ‘Schindler’ (Matthias?:)
  • Spanish ‘Domas Mituzas’ to English translates as ‘Anthere Anthere’ (every wikipedian has a bit of Florence inside :)
  • English to Portuguese renders me as “Domas Lessig” (I have creative commons t-shirt :)
  • English to Chinese is “florence 100,000″…

Thats what Web 3.0 is all about. Tampering with my personality. Who am I? :)

10 Responses to “Weird wit by Google translation technology”

  1. Well. I am going to ask them, but I have a certain suspicion.

    Mathias

  2. Anthere says:

    ????

    AMAZING !

  3. notafish says:

    Fabulous. Love the comment ” a bit of Florence inside”. We could make stickers and plaster them all over Wikipedia :-)

  4. llywrch says:

    I guess you don’t actually exist, Domas. You’re just a sockpuppet manipulated by the Wikimedia-Creative Commons-American Library Association conspiracy. ;-)

    Geoff

  5. Erik Zachte says:

    Wikipedia translates in any language with western alphabet to Wikipedia, except for English-Spanish where it translates to ‘Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español’ :0

    Fortunately our Spanish speaking fellow encyclopedians can learn of the existence of Wikipedia by translating ‘Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español’ into English.

  6. Anthere says:

    Yesterday, they mentionned in the french press that “Nicolas Sarkozy” from french to english, translated to “Nicolas Bush”. The journalist mentionned that only one word (Nicolas Sarkozy) had the glitch.

    But I see that they have “fixed” the glitch. Still, that was fun :-))))

  7. Patty says:

    Funny how programs like that can work :)

    But Google translate is still very promising though. I like the fact that you can ‘train’ it. Makes it more trustworthy than even some of the software that you’d have to pay for.

  8. Jim says:

    I use google translate for translating websites. But i didn’t realized this.. But it a nice online tool for translating Website.

  9. Pancho says:

    I can’t get over the crime Microsoft committed by translating “cell” as “celda” for all uses in Spanish. There is a good Spanish word “célula” for brain cells, cells in a table etc. (here’s where the MS error kills me!). There is another word “celda” for the monk’s or the prisoner’s cell. But that’s the only one microsoft uses its wisdom.