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.'"

Comments

Duh?

[litewoheat]

I guess the dipshit journalists didn't realize that most Dutch speak English better than Americans or The British.

Hovercraft

[Joe Random]

My hovercraft is full of eels.

Babelfish has no Hebrew

[nlaporte]

Has anyone else noticed that the Babelfish site doesn't actually list Hebrew as a choice? This makes the whole thing a little fishy-sounding (pun intended) to me.

Re:The question we're all thinking.

[kryten_nl]

Remember kids, it's pronounced (using similar sounding english words): "pa-the-stool-an".