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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.'"
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.
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.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
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... 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.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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/ (15 mil)
VS English with 1.8 billion. Odds are they would have had a translator anyway though...
and babelfish doesn't even do Hebrew ....
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
0x or or snor perron?!
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