Babelfish Sparks Minor Diplomatic Row

Stony Stevenson writes with a link to a cautionary tale on the ITnews site. A group of journalists heading to The Netherlands were gathering some information prior to the trip. They sent off an email to the Dutch foreign ministry asking some questions, but as they weren't native speakers they needed some help. Unfortunately, they turned to Babelfish for official correspondence. "The beginning of the email read: 'Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian.'"

The question we're all thinking.

[SnoopJeDi]

Which babelfish are we talking about here?

"Helloh Bud"

[baldass_newbie]

I thought that was a new strain of Dutch hydro at first...
Silly me.

Microsoft speech engine?

[pembo13]

Are you sure they didn't use some Microsoft based speech engine?

What do you expect?

[AltGrendel]

They used the "English to Dutch Jive" setting.

Could be worse...

[Kelson]

At least the words, "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" didn't drift across the conference table, resonating across time and space.

It's not like this hasn't happened before...

[jspenguin1]

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

Lamentable occurrences have begat dude

[Critical Facilities]

Regression of palpable anguish forseen within future modification of linguistic tendency laden spoken word.*

* Translated via Babelfish from Dutch Foreign Minister's reply

Re:It could have been worse.

[UncHellMatt]

My nipples explode with DELIGHT!

could have been worse

[Rezazur]

Well, at least they didn't use the Vista speech recognition. That could end up as some MAJOR diplomatic misunderstanding...

Old saying...

[Sique]

"To err is human, to really screw up, you need a computer."

That said I remember a story I heard once from a neighbour. He was in Moscow for a conference, and in the morning he spilled coffee on his tie. So he was wondering i) where to get a necktie in the morning around the hotel and ii) what the hell the russian word for "necktie" is. He remembered: It was similar to the german word for the same thing. So he just tried, walked over to the nearest kiosque and asked the russian lady: "Kravat?" She was killing him with her stare, and he suddenly realized: kravat = bed. galstukh = necktie.

The translation was "flawed"

[vux984]

FTFA:

The beginning of the email read: 'Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian.'

The translation was flawed as Babelfish confused 'ha'im', the Hebrew word for 'if', with 'ha'ima', which means 'mother'.

Oh!!! Of course, that makes sense. Lets fix that right up: s/mother/if

Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The if your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian.

I don't know about you, but I suspect there might be additional flaws.

This isn't much different than a typical HS Grad.

[tiedyejeremy]

Sad but true. I've seen too many people who have passed the National Standardized Tests and graduated High School who write about as coherently as what was posted.

Oblig.

[rock217]

Jive Lady: Oh stewardess! I speak jive.
Randy: Oh, good.
Jive Lady: He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Randy: All right. Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine?
Jive Lady: Jus' hang loose, blood. She gonna catch ya up on da' rebound on da' med side.
Second Jive Dude: What it is, big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap!
Jive Lady: Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don' want no help, chump don't GET da' help!
First Jive Dude: Say 'e can't hang, say seven up!
Jive Lady: Jive ass dude don't got no brains anyhow! Hmmph!

Hitchhiker's Guide

[Volfied]

Ironically, the "original" Babel Fish was supposed to have caused more and bloodier wars than any other discovery in galactic history because it increased understanding between planets.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[torako]

Idiots who trust legendary untrustworthiness of Babelfish for the official less important diplomatic file of the work spark. There, I translated it to Dutch and back using Babelfish for some added clarity.

The original grammer nazi

[Joe the Lesser]

CENTURION: What's this, then? 'Romanes Eunt Domus'? 'People called Romanes they go the house'?
BRIAN: It-- it says, 'Romans, go home'.
CENTURION: No, it doesn't. What's Latin for 'Roman'? Come on!
BRIAN: Aah!
CENTURION: Come on!
BRIAN: 'R-- Romanus'?
CENTURION: Goes like...?
BRIAN: 'Annus'?
CENTURION: Vocative plural of 'annus' is...?
BRIAN: Eh. 'Anni'?
CENTURION: 'Romani'. 'Eunt'? What is 'eunt'?
BRIAN: 'Go'. Let--
CENTURION: Conjugate the verb 'to go'.
BRIAN: Uh. 'Ire'. Uh, 'eo'. 'Is'. 'It'. 'Imus'. 'Itis'. 'Eunt'.
CENTURION: So 'eunt' is...?
BRIAN: Ah, huh, third person plural, uh, present indicative. Uh, 'they go'.
CENTURION: But 'Romans, go home' is an order, so you must use the...?
BRIAN: The... imperative!
CENTURION: Which is...?
BRIAN: Umm! Oh. Oh. Um, 'i'. 'I'!
CENTURION: How many Romans?
BRIAN: Ah! 'I'-- Plural. Plural. 'Ite'. 'Ite'.
CENTURION: 'Ite'.
BRIAN: Ah. Eh.
CENTURION: 'Domus'?
BRIAN: Eh.
CENTURION: Nominative?
BRIAN: Oh.
CENTURION: 'Go home'? This is motion towards. Isn't it, boy?
BRIAN: Ah. Ah, dative, sir! Ahh! No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! Ah! Oh, the... accusative! Accusative! Ah! 'Domum', sir! 'Ad domum'! Ah! Oooh! Ah!
CENTURION: Except that 'domus' takes the...?
BRIAN: The locative, sir!
CENTURION: Which is...?!
BRIAN: 'Domum'.
CENTURION: 'Domum'.
BRIAN: Aaah! Ah.
CENTURION: 'Um'. Understand?
BRIAN: Yes, sir.
CENTURION: Now, write it out a hundred times.
BRIAN: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
CENTURION: Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[cayenne8]

They should have used the Hungarian phrasebook from Monty Python....

"Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya! Do you waaaaant ... do you waaaaaant ... to come back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?"

Re:Well, at least it wasn't...

[Rob T Firefly]

All your mother are belong to Israel?

Before they were led away...

[writermike]

Before the journalists were led away by police, one of them could be heard yelling, "My nipples explode with delight!"

Re:in addition, totally unnecessary

[Anonymous Coward]

though they often hold back on speaking German for, uh, cultural reasons

Ist Ihr Hovercraft voll von Aalen?

Re:could have been worse

[Dancindan84]

Dear Aunt, enclosed five of the double killer the foreign minister select all

Re:Microsoft speech engine?

[sm62704]

Troll? It seems the micrsoft employees/stockholders/fans have mod points, but no sense of humor today.

Now, if you had said Linux based speech engine... ;)

-mcgrew

PS: mods, be careful. I metamoderated yesterday AND today. And I have a sense of humor. And my sense of humor is not normal.

Maybe I shouldn't have sent that letter to Iran

[WillAffleckUW]

Where I accepted the translation from "All your base are belong to US" instead of "All your base are belong to us".

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[WormholeFiend]

Moreover, why not go ahead and pay a translation service? professional translation with proofreading is usually less than $0.30 USD per word.

My guess is A) they did not want to spend any money and/or B) they were in a hurry.

Plus, for people in a hurry, rush translation orders usually (at least) double in price.

I remember one time, one of my translator colleagues got a call from a client in a hurry, asking why the translation was taking so long and if his [translation] machine was broken.

My colleague explained that translations are done by people, not machines, which also explained the cost. He added in jest/sarcasm that if someone wanted an instantaneous and free translation, one simply needed to use Babelfish.

Five minutes later, the office admin came to his desk, saying that translation order had been cancelled.

We laughed our collective asses off when we took that cancelled document and had it translated by Babelfish.

Babelfish fun

[ukemike]

I like translating a sentence back and forth between languages.

english->spanish->english

I have taste to backwards translate an oration forwards and between the languages.

english->german->english

I may translate a sentence between languages back and forth.

english->russian->english

I love to transfer proposal back and forth between the languages.

english->greek->english

I wish a proposal back and forth between the languages.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[lgw]

Why are these journalists, who should have had _some_ form of education

You answered your own question there. It's not like these were bloggers, who would need to worry about getting their fact straight.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[Grygus]

I was with you for a while but the last part of your post is all encrypted or something.