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.'"
The question we're all thinking. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw this yesterday and chuckled a little, but it just raised a bunch of questions for me.
The first two are the ones that really puzzle me. Even if it were just a journalist at a high school paper, I would expect them to do better. Go ask for help from the local university or something. Babelfish? Really?
English As She Is Spoke - Twain is Proved WRONG! (Score:5, Interesting)
--Mark Twain, on English as She Is Spoke [wikipedia.org]
We have bested the Portuguese masters of muddle! [zompist.com] It took the brilliance of a near-passing grade on the Turing test.
Re:English As She Is Spoke - Twain is Proved WRONG (Score:2)
Invisible idiots (Score:2)
I didn't think to try Dutch to Hebrew, though!
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Well the preceding sentence stated
"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"
So that didn't help them much..
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Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya! Do you waaaaant ... do you waaaaaant ... to come back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?"
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Yeah, I have heard similar stories before, and they always shock me. I mean, I guess it makes sense to try and do a good-faith effort to send a message in the reader's native tongue, but you should always include the source
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Why are these journalists, who should have had _some_ form of education, not able to write English? Is the most relevant question.
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I've seen a number of debates over which languages are the most difficult on the planet. The winners in this "contest of shame" are always the ones with the most insane writing system
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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...
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Maybe they were trying to show a bit of respect, and making the effort to communicate. How arrogant would it be to send a message and leave the translation of it up to the recipient ?
* Maybe not, you said "tons" and yanks use pounds for everything.
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in the Netherlands there's a major ruckus over placing paddos (the halucination-inducting mushrooms) on the opium list and thus making it illegal to sell.
pa-the-stool-an is phonetic for paddestoelen, the Dutch word for mushroom.
Re:The question we're all thinking. (Score:5, Funny)
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Reminds me of silly timewasting things a co-worker used to do: punch stuff in, translate to another language, then translate back. Then he'd laugh his head off at it. Generally, to be that silly, I require considerable sleep deprivation.
"Helloh Bud" (Score:5, Funny)
Silly me.
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They're only journalists (Score:5, Insightful)
How can journalists spark a major diplomatic event?
Re:They're only journalists (Score:4, Insightful)
Muhammed cartoons?
Watergate?
Mod Parent Up! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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As for the "Total fabrication, right?" line, remember that journalists have an obligation to report on only the facts and what's told to them by credible sources. Chances are very good that, despite you thinking you most absolutely know what happened, chances are you haven't a clue. It's the same affect as witnesses to crimes.
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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.
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I disagree [wikipedia.org].
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Re:They're only journalists (Score:5, Informative)
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
Microsoft speech engine? (Score:3, Funny)
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?
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This seems the most likely answer. The text is so amazingly bad that it's obvious to anyone that it's at least a complete mistake, if not also obviously a very bad machine generated translation. It's not like the whole thing was reasonable except for one bad insult about the recipient's mother; the whole dang thing is just blatant nonsense.
If your spam filter didn't automatically junk
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Why don't you find out? Go to Babelfish [digital.com] and try translating some text into and out of Hebrew, just to see how well it does.
After looking closely at the language options presented, ask yourself if there is anything hard to believe about the /. headline, summary, linked article, and even linked article from the linked article.
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The reporter asks "Is waterboarding torture?"
The AG-designate who legalisms make news on Al Jazerra wins confirmation - but he does not win friends abroad.
2) Does the country in question have a stick so far up their colective asses they couldn't laugh this off?
It is unprofessional. It shows an elemental lack of courtesy and respect. In many societies the formalities are important.
What do you expect? (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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Could be worse... (Score:5, Funny)
It's not like this hasn't happened before... (Score:5, Funny)
Babelfish fun (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Lamentable occurrences have begat dude (Score:3, Funny)
* Translated via Babelfish from Dutch Foreign Minister's reply
could have been worse (Score:4, Funny)
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Old saying... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
A more general saying would be (Score:2)
Nearly every computer screw up is just a special case of this general principle, only mediated through the miscommunication of a computer system's requirements and capabilities.
Re:A more general saying would be (Score:5, Insightful)
English - do you speak it? (Score:2)
The translation was "flawed" (Score:5, Funny)
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.
The article was "flawed" (Score:2)
"ha'ima" actually means "the mother". So, while bablefish may produce errors, apparently so do reporters... Also, IIRC, in non-transliterated Hebrew, the two words are homonyms.
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.
This isn't much different than a typical HS Grad. (Score:3, Funny)
Summary translated to Dutch and back (Score:2, Interesting)
Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:2, Funny)
Reason for diplomats to have a sense of humor (Score:2)
"I couldn't tell if I was getting an email from Dutch journalists or bankers from Nigeria."
"Mossad was flipping out... they thought this was a death threat from Borat."
"At least they spell better than Bush."
Then you give the journalists a nice gift basket or something, to show it's all in good fun, get some good public
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:Babelfish Doesn't Translate Hebrew (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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As others have pointed out the widespread use of English, perhaps the journalists began with an English message
That doesn't make any sense.
The article says that the confusion was over the translation of the Hebrew words "ha'im" (if) to "hi'ima" (the mother). If the journalist wrote the original letter in English, he would not have made such an absurd substitution.
Also, there is no way anyone, even a computer, would confuse the Dutch words for "if" and "mother". They are not close.
in addition, totally unnecessary (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus the Dutch language is not deep in terms of dimensional vocabulary. While the Eskimos may have 70 words for snow,
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Not quite, according to Stephen Fry, ( QI ), who reckons it's one of those Arctic myths.
How many words do the Eskimo have for snow?
A popular myth claims that the Eskimos have 50, 100 or even 400 words for snow in their language, compared to English's one word. Like all myths, this one is not exactly true. When you consider how many words there are in English to describe snow (such as ice, slush, sleet, hail, snow flake, powder, frozen water, etc.) it becomes evid
they didn't finish the proper procedure (Score:2)
translated into dutch through babelfish->
response from dutch foreign minister->
translated into english through babelfish->
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.
babel poetry (Score:2)
Let's spice it up a LOT! (Score:2)
The Helloh button honours the memory of 5 questions dlinniy the Minister the strangers of affairses: The nut/mother will be your attendance enevolencesschlaf in Israel, or at the bed your conflict brain will be Palestinian israeliano
I'd definitely say there are bigger problems here.
TFA is cr@p -- check The Register (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Well... (Score:2)
Before they were led away... (Score:5, Funny)
Could have been worse (Score:2)
Terms of service (Score:4, Interesting)
(...)
You agree to not use the Service to:
(...)
o. translate any correspondence, of any kind, which could lead to diplomatic rows, a chilling of diplomatic relations, armed hostilities, and/or Global Thermal Nuclear War.
Maybe I shouldn't have sent that letter to Iran (Score:2, Funny)
Mars Attacks! (Score:2)
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The original grammer nazi (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Having used Babelfish for fun a few times, I've seen it twist the meaning of things fabulously especially when the input and output languages have different grammatical construction. The way to use Babelfish with a little more consideration
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As I understand it, vowels are indicated by the pointing of the consonants; if the written Hebrew doesn't use points (jots and tiddles), it is Hebrew that is over 2,000 years old. Not a dialect the average journalist is likely to know. It is more likely that babelfish is designed with English as its core language, and transl
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Not to mention the even bigger problem that Hebrew isn't one of the languages that Babelfish actually supports.
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Sure, it failed but it does show they were trying to show some respect.
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The issue in the sentence wasn't the "Berliner", but the "ein". The correct form would have been "Ich bin Berliner". The extra "ein" in there implies an object rather than a person.
It is technically incorrect, but any German listening would have understood what he meant.
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am i missing something here?
Yes. Reading comprehension.
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Er is geen diplomatiek incident. De Minister van Buitenlandse zaken Verhagen heeft geen klacht ingediend want hij weet niet bij wie hij een klacht zou moeten indienen, als hij daar al behoefte aan had. De vertaling was gemaakt van Hebreeuws naar Engels en niet naar Nederlands. Niet met Babelfish want dat kent geen Hebreeuws. De journalisten zijn nog steeds welkom maar de minister denkt dat het handiger voor ze is om hun vertaalcomputer mee te nemen.
Weet je toevallig niet wat de originele Nederlandse zin was, of een Nederlandstalig artikel over dit incident? Ik heb de indruk dat wat hier gepost werd ook nog eens door Babelfish gesleurd werd...
English-speaking people, use Babelfish to translate this from dutch if you want to understand it.