Babelfish Sparks Minor Diplomatic Row 331
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.'"
Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Morons trusting the legendary untrustworthiness of Babelfish for official work spark minor diplomatic row.
There.
They're only journalists (Score:5, Insightful)
How can journalists spark a major diplomatic event?
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
2) Does the country in question have a stick so far up their colective asses they couldn't laugh this off?
3) Or is the headline total flamebait, and I'm a sucker?
Re:They're only journalists (Score:4, Insightful)
Muhammed cartoons?
Watergate?
Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod Parent Up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Journalists report the "facts" (bias or not) to a large audicence (tax payers or not).
2) Does the country in question have a stick so far up their colective asses they couldn't laugh this off?
If any comment or criticism can public record, due diligence must be followed.
3) Or is the headline total flamebait, and I'm a sucker?
Most headlines on
Re:They're only journalists (Score:3, Insightful)
Babelfish Doesn't Translate Hebrew (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, in the Jerusalem Post article [jpost.com], they point to a site babelfish.com, which appears to be a SEO site and doesn't do translations at all.
Compound that with the question of "Why would the Dutch Foreign Ministry care about an email from some random Israeli reporter?", and I'm guessing that this entire story is a hoax.
Yes, I realize that the Jerusalem Post is supposedly a high-quality paper, but the fact that they linked to a site (babelfish.com) that doesn't even do online translations makes me think that this wasn't their most well-researched and well-substantiated work. If this is really causing such a fuss in Holland, how come there is nothing in the Dutch press about this?
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Reputation. Being nice to journalist (particularly Israeli journalists) makes your government look all enlightened and politically correct.
They did laugh this one off. The Dutch government was trying to gussy up its reputation by doing some special favors for (what they thought were) Israeli journalists but then then the "journalists" demonstrated that they were either massively incompetent journalists or not even journalists at all (just some random Israelis trying to score some special favors from the Dutch government). So, rather than special favors, the "journalists" got laughed at.
More of a troll than flamebait but there is a tidbit of real interest here in that the article indirectly examines the current state of computer translation of natural languages.
Linked story is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
It couldn't have possibly been Babelfish, since Babelfish doesn't support Hebrew.
It may have been babylon.com [theregister.co.uk], but this hasn't been confirmed.
Re:A more general saying would be (Score:5, Insightful)
Whole Story is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, babelfish doesn't translate Hebrew, and with good reason. Hebrew is hard for a computer to translate. The three letters, Heh Aleph Mem could have just as easily been translated to "the nation" or "the nut" (as in nuts and bolts) as it was to "the mother". The only way to know the correct translation is to know the context of the word, which is not always easy.
Secondly, whomever wrote this hoax doesn't speak Hebrew very well. You don't have to go from "ha'im" to "ha'ima" to get from "if" to "the mother". In fact, the letters Heh Aleph Mem could be read as "ha'im" (if) or "ha'aim" (the mother) without having to add a letter to get all the way to "ha'ima".
Lastly, the Dutch are world-renowned for their extreme tolerance. There is no way a Dutch person would be deeply offended over something like this.
Re:They're only journalists (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, diplomats are diplomats because they are smart and non-reactionary. They would not react like this to mails that presumably came from a domain that identified the senders as foreign journalists -- or otherwise identified the journalists as being just that.
In addition to this, (having lived in Holland myself) the Dutch are generally pretty good with the fact that few people speak Dutch. They are also used to dealing in a number of languages, and the sometimes accidental comedy that ensues. It's clear that the senders of this mail were not native speakers -- thus why would anyone overreact?
Truth is -- they wouldn't.
I call Bullshit.
Re:Mod Parent Up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even when people complain about the press, they usually complain about the press failing to mislead the public in the correct direction. Amazing.
Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then take China, which I understand has more students learning English than the entire population of the United States (yeah, that bothers me a little.) Let's not forget India, which has stolen a good chunk of China's economic thunder simply because they speak better English (for the time being.) The reality is this: the British Empire spread The Queen's English far and wide, and America's later scientific and economic prowess only cemented the value of that language to many peoples across the globe. You may not like the fact the English is today's lingua franca, but then again reality is something that most people on this miserable planet dislike intensely. You appear to be no different in that regard. Personally, I expect that tomorrow's common language will be Mandarin. Ha! And you thought English is hard to learn. I'd rather learn Spanish.
So far as those researchers are concerned: well, let's look at some facts there as well. Science is now (and has been for some time) a global phenomenon. You can complain that it's "needlessly hard" for scientists to publish their findings in English (and I'll grant that it's a burden, no argument) but what solution to that can you suggest? Babelfish? Yeah, right
As I pointed out, for a variety of historical reasons a working knowledge of English is actually a fairly common skill around the world: should such utility simply be disposed of because you find English "distasteful" or the Anglo-Saxon history unattractive (I don't fully grasp the relevance of your comment there, but okay)? That's ridiculous on the face of it: get over any anti-American bias you may have and accept that people (scientists and otherwise) speak English (of whatever variety) because it's often the only method they have to talk to each other.
Language is a tool, a means to an end, and you don't have to like a tool to use it. Another fact: people that refuse to learn a foreign language are people that haven't been in a position where that lack of knowledge cost them something, made their lives more difficult. Most Americans are like that, because America is a large country and most of us don't deal with people of other countries on a daily basis (well, other than Mexico, that is.) That's hardly the case in Europe, where you almost have to be a polyglot just to order dinner.
Or speak English.