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.'"

Why not ask the questions in English?

[Zedrick]

Most Dutch people speak better English than Dutch (at least according to other Dutch people in neighbouring provinces with a slightly different dialect). I've lived in The Netherlands and I have a Dutch girlfriend since 4 years back, but I can't speak any Dutch - no point in trying since everybody is fluent in English.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[kryten_nl]

They were translating from Hebrew to English.

Why are these journalists, who should have had _some_ form of education, not able to write English? Is the most relevant question.

TFA is cr@p -- check The Register

[Half-pint HAL]

They translated it from Hebrew to English (not Dutch) -- hence the availability of quotes in English.

The Reg also initially made the mistake of trusting their source unquestioningly and didn't think to check whether Babelfish actually had a Hebrew option (I'm surprised how few of you checked!), but to their credit, they've updated. Check it out [theregister.co.uk]... there's a new culprit in the frame, but I won't name names for fear of libel suits if it's not true.

HAL.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[bodfa]

Actually they were translating from Hebrew to Dutch.
Note that the total number of Hebrew speakers is fairly small
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language/ [wikipedia.org] (15 mil)
VS English with 1.8 billion. Odds are they would have had a translator anyway though...

Re:They're only journalists

[binford2k]

and babelfish doesn't even do Hebrew ....

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[Anonymous Coward]

The real hilarity of it is, in the Netherlands, of all places, you can find tons of english speakers. Hell, the people who got the letter probably spoke decent english. Why, in gods name, would you do such an amatuer translation, and not just assume that someone will be able to read it.

If you RTFA you would know they were translating between Hebrew and Dutch. Shame on everyone that marked this insightful!

Re:Babelfish Doesn't Translate Hebrew

[zmooc]

It's not a hoax for sure; the Dutch government responded that it was real and that it didn't really bother them. They cancelled the trip the interview was about, however, since the journalists didn't speak english well enough for it to be of any use;-)

The translation with babelfish was from english to dutch - probably they used other software to translate from hebrew to english first.

But the part about the dutch government giving a fuck was definately a hoax.

If you can read dutch, here's a link. http://www.depers.nl/binnenland/120757/E-mail-Isra%C3%ABl-schokt-Verhagen.html [depers.nl]

Re:They're only journalists

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no overreaction.

According to local reporters here is what happenened: 5 Israeli journalists were preparing to go to The Netherlands. One of them, who (it turned out) didnt speak any English, was tasked with sending questions ahead. He used Babelfish to translate the Hebrew. Unfortunately, in Hebrew the word for "of" is close to the word for "mother". So, lots of "mother" in the text. Dutch diplomats were puzzled (I've read the text, it looked a bit like "all your mother belong to us") and asked for clarification. After which the other journalists found out and it was reported.

All in all, no big incident (just mild curiosity), but the journalists involved were very ashamed when it all came out and seem to have postponed their trips for the moment. Too bad, could have been fun having them on talkshows :)