Lost in the Translation

jetpack writes "This isn't really news for nerds. In fact it's not even news (from 1996) However, since it is kinda related to some of the fun we've had with babblefish in the past, it seems kinda relevant. One of the documentation chix0rs here at work pointed this one out to me. Check out this interview with Madonna. " Ok, normally I wouldn't post something like this, but if you need a laugh, just read it. It's worth your time.

Comments

wild and crazy guys

[Keith Higgins]

I was wondering why it read so much like "wild and crazy guys" dialogue. Still funny.

Of course, all mistranslation humour is highly derivative - when was the book The English as She Is Spoke written? 1860s? Everyone who does an English-Portuguese-English translation on Babelfish is paying homage to that one.

Madonna Interview Remix.

[dougman]

For the reading pleasure of the Slashdot community, I have decided to take the English-to-Hungarian-to-English Madonna interview and run it through 2 more layers of translation.

Without further ado, here is the world premiere of the English-to-Hungarian-to-Puff Daddy-to-English-to-Linux Zealot translation of the Madonna interview. (lifts curtain)



Blikk: Madonna, Budapest says hello with arms that are spread-eagled. Did you have a visit here that was agreeable? Are you in good odor? You are the biggest
fan of our young people who hear your musical productions and like to move their bodies in response.

Madonna: Thank you for saying these fresh compliments [holds up Red Hat CD]. Please stop with taking whack ass photographs until I have open sourced my body for all to
see [crosses arms]. This is a joke I have made, muthafucka.

Blikk: Madonna, let's cut toward the hunt: Are you a bold hussy-woman that feasts on men who are tops?

Madonna: Yes, yes, this is certainly something that brings to the surface my longings. In America it is not considered to be smack when a woman flashes that sweet booty in a phat joint with whack Tanqueray present. And there is a more normal attitude toward GPL'd software that also makes my day.

Blikk: Is this how you met Carlos, your love-servant who is reputed? Did you know he was heaven-sent right off the stick? Or were you dating many other people
in your bed at the same time?

Madonna: No, he was the only distro I was using in my crib then, so it is a scientific fact that the gnome desktop environment was made in my hootchie using him. But check yoself before you wreck yoself! I am a fly ho and not a closed-source solution! Carlos is an everyday distro who is in the orbit of a star who is being recompiled by him, not a playa.

Blikk: May we talk about your other "baby," your movie, then? Please do not be denying that the similarities between you and the real Evita are grounded in basis.
Power, money, tasty food, Grammys--all these elements are afoot.

Madonna: What's your problem, G? Evita never ran on a Sparc station, you better recognize!

Blikk: Perhaps not. But as to your film, in trying to bring your reputation along a rocky road, can you make people forget the bad explosions of Who's That Girl?
and Shanghai Surprise?

Madonna: I am a phat entertainer. That's my joint that I am paid (and share with the free software foundation) to do.

Blikk: O.K., here's a question from left space: What was your book Slut about?

Madonna: It was called Penguin, fool.

Blikk: Not in Hungary. Here it was called Slut. How did it come to publish? Were you lovemaking with a man-about-town printer? Do you prefer making
suggestive literature to fast-selling CDs?

Madonna: I'm a pimp, I can do it all. I am preferring only to become respected all over the map as a 100% open source artist.

Blikk: There is much interest in you from this geographic region, so I must ask this final questions: How many Hungarian men have you dated in bed? Are they No.
1? How are they comparing to Argentine men, who are famous for being tip-top as well?

Madonna: Well, to avoid laying the global smack down, I would say microsoft sucks [crosses arms]. No, no, I am serious now. Give me props, I am working like a Beowulf cluster all the way
around the clock! I have been too busy even to try the fine mary jane that makes your country one for the record books.

Blikk: Thank you for your candid chitchat.

Madonna: No problem, dope friend of open source who is a girl.

Re:Babelfish isn't too bad

[Mr. Piccolo]

Mangles vocabulary less?? Check out what it does to this story (English -> German -> English):

Lost in the translation

Communicated by CmdrTaco on Thu October 14, 22:48 CDT of they ain't you ain't kidding the department of jet luggage does not write " this is really message for nerds. It is not actual even messages (of 1996) it kinda is however there, which is confessed on something by the fun in connection, that, we with babblefish in the past to have had, it seems the relevant kinda. One of the documents chix0rs at the work showed this out here to me. Check from this interview with okayMadonna. ", normally became I not somewhat in such a way, but to communicate, if you need a laughter, it even read. It is worth your time.
(more read... | 35 comment)

Dunno... maybe the translation to English is the broken part.

Obviously

[aheitner]

you learned a great deal from fortune(6)

Re:Bite the Wax Tadpole

[M@T]

Do you reckon you'd get slapped with a trademark infringement if you created a drink and called it "Bite the Wax Tadpole" ?

M@T

Budapest.

[jelwell]

Ok, I must say that I was in Budapest this last summer for a bit and I was awe-struck by some the culture there. In Budapest everyone wears skin tight clothing and little to no underwear. If a woman is wearing underwear you can make out every frill of the lace of the g-string that hugs the curves of the butt. I couldn't believe how little they wear there. My guidebook (Let's Go) had informed me that they wear speedo type clothing, and very little regularly, but nonetheless I was shocked.

I approached and spoke with one girl who I had the pleasure of befriending and upon asking her "why women in Budapest wear so little" she was as astonished as I was. Her comment was to the effect of "the women in american movies wear the same". I tried, but could not explain to her that movies are not reality - that everyone in america does NOT dress like they do in the movies. (especially the ones we export to Budapest).

The point here is: Budapest is a pretty racey place. The hostel I stayed at had a drug list behind the counter, and Burger King maps listed strip bars as advertising.

So it doesn't surprise me at all that Budapest loves Madonna.
Joseph Elwell.

Re:Pills for a headache

[Jburkholder]

Ha, I love those! I wish I could find the list I had somewhere of the mistakes companies made trying to push their products into markets where they had no clue about the local culture!

My favorite is when Gerber tried to move into some north-african markets. Anyone who has seen their baby-food products will recognize the cute little fat baby on the label. What they didn't realize was the prevailing practice of placing pictures of a product's contents on the labels because of the high illiteracy rates. People couldn't read so a can of pork and beans would have a picture of a pig and beans on the label. A picture of a baby with the words 'strained peas' on the label did not generate sales for some strange reason...

How is that funny?

[jabber]

Rob, I just don't see how you can find that amusing.

It makes a lot more sense than most of what comes out of Hollywood these days.

And I'm not just blowing air thru a cellulose-based beverage container typically used at informal outdoor gatherings.

not surprising...

[Haven]

I took a trip to Mexico (when I was younger) once and I saw an English Workbook that a 7th grader (english equivalent) had, and it was full of crap like this. The English parts of the book were indecipherable. It kinda makes me think what kind of insane spanish I learned in High School.

Bite the Wax Tadpole

[PurpleBob]

This interview is one of many things that has been made better by mistranslation.

For example, the Chinese syllables that Coca-Cola used at first, which sounded roughly like "Coca-Cola", literally meant "Bite the Wax Tadpole." Now THAT is an awesome name for a drink. IMO, instead of changing the Chinese name to "Liquid Happiness", they should have changed the English name to "Bite the Wax Tadpole."

--

Re:Bite the Wax Tadpole

[Ed Avis]

wasn't there another one where "Coke Adds Life" came out "Coke brings back your dead relatives" or something to that affect?

This was Pepsi, and is believed to be true, see the alt.folklore.urban FAQ:

• F.*The old Chevy Nova was a failure in Spanish speaking countries because it translates to "No go." [Esp. since "Nova" means "star."]
• Tb.Pepsi had a similar episode where "Come Alive with Pepsi!" is rendered as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead!"

(although I would have thought that 'the choice for a new generation' is more likely to translate as 'reincarnation'.)

Interesting...

[ParadoXIII]

This should give the people working on the Universal Metalanguage some food for thought... I predicted something like this for the Metalang's attempts at translating.

That is what I am being saying

[NatePuri]

for a long time.

You computer nerd peoples do not make enough laughs. You must comprehend the importance of the laughters. We listen to the jokes we is tellings and really laugh a lot.

No seriousness, everything is happens for a reason. How we going to be friends unless speaking translated? Madonna is a slut book! Ha ha... She has the flappies! ;)

Oh boy, these American musics really eat the pie! In my country, we listen. But I never could understand what the hell they saying. Even though I listen to these musics all day and dance, all I could speak in English language was "I sue you."

I thought I was a cool guy and saying like the "Hi Dude!" Boy I should have shoot myself in the hole in the head. Ok now dudes bye bye. Don't stop with the having laughters, it is an importance, seriousness.

I hate to rain on your parade, but...

[Jonathan the Nerd]

This is just a spoof. More information can be found at http://www.snopes.com/humor/misxla te/madonna.htm.

Igniting the tablecloth

[quentinsf]

I remember, some years ago, trying to find out more about a DEC Hinote Ultra II laptop I was thinking of buying. The only review I could find on the web was in Spanish, so I fed it through a translation service. Most of it worked fairly well, and I could read the article, but it did want to translate 'desktop' as 'tablecloth' and 'turn on' as 'ignite'.

The reviewer was very excited about the fact that the laptop was so capable, you could often go for the whole day without igniting your tablecloth.

(Actually, the machine turned out to be one of the worst purchases I have ever made. Igniting the tablecloth would have been much more fun.)

English as she is spoke...

[acb]

This reminds me of what is probably one of the least useful phrasebooks ever written (the following review of which occasionally appears on mailing lists):

This comes from the best sixty cents I ever spent, a British book called
"The Incomplete Book of Failures: The Official Handbook of the
Not-Terribly-Good Club of Great Britain". It's probably out of print
and unavailable, but get it if you can.

The Worst Phrasebook
=================

Pedro Carolino is one of the all-time freats. In 1883 he wrote an
English-Portuguese phrasebook despite having little or no command of the
English language.

His greatly recommended book "The New Guide of the Conversation in
Portuguese and English" has now been reprinted under the title "English
As She is Spoke".

After a brief dedication:

'We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him,
and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation
of the studious persons, and especially of the youth, at which we
dedicate him particularly.'

Carolino kicks off with some 'Familiar phrases' which the Portuguese
holidaymaker might find useful. Among these are:

Dress your hairs
This hat go well
Undress you to
Exculpate me by your brother's
She make the prude
Do you cut the hairs?
He has tost his all good

He then moves on the 'Familiar Dialogues' which include 'For to wish
the good morning,' and 'For to visit a sick.'

Dialogue 18 - 'For to ride a horse' - begins: 'Here is a horse who
have bad looks. Give me another. I will not that. He not sall know to
march, he is pursy, he is foundered. Don't you are ashamed to give me a
jade as like? he is unshoed, he is with nails up.' In the section on
'Anecdotes' Carolino offers the following guaranteed to enthrall any
listener:

'One eyed was laied against a man which had good eyes that he saw
better than him. The party was accepted. I had gain, over said the one
eyed; why I se you two eyes, and you not look me who one.'

It is difficult to top that, but Carolino manages in a useful section
of 'Idiotism and proverbs'. These include:

Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss
He eat to coaches
A take is better than two you shall have
The stone as roll not heap up not foam

and the well-known expression:

The dog than bark not bite

Carolino's particular genius was aided by the fact that he did not
possess an Enlish-Portuguese Dictionary. However, he did possess
Portuguese-French and French-English dictionaries through both of which
he dragged his original expressions. The results yield language of
originality and great beauty. Is there anything in conventional English
which could equal the vividness of 'To craunch a marmoset'?

Re:Fruit Slang

[wrenling]

Taking a wild stab at it, I would imagine that #3 is referring to 'sour grapes.'

For those of you *cough* who claim to be too young to catch the reference, its from the Aesop's Fable "The Fox and the Grapes."

Cause back in my day we didnt have any of this namy-pamby dick and jane stuff.. we had aesops fables and we LIKED 'em!

Of course this isn't a real (mis)translation...

[kiscica]

as anyone who's familiar with Hungarian could tell (it isn't at all in the style of ordinary Hungarian-to-English mistranslation, or "Hunglish" as we call it). Note that the article does point out that this is a joke:

>USA Today, presumably pressed for space,
>published only a few of these gems, leaving the
>rest to the imagination, whence has sprung the
>following complete transcript:
-kiscica
who has worked as a Hungarian-to-English (and vice-versa) translator

Fruit Slang

[Uruk]

I saw a booklet while I was in Germany once that was about american slang. It was written in the 1970s but was still being read by some germans as an instructional manual on american slang. One chapter was called "Fruit Slang" and contained such helpful slang sentences as:

1) Everyone knows that he's top banana
2) He's the big apple in this town.
3) He is such a grape

and more that I forget...they seem to revolve around stature, but I can't figure out where the hell #3 came from - I'm guessing that #2 came from someone who heard about New york's nickname while high on crack...and number one is "real" slang, it's just ancient, and was stupid even when it was current. :)

MDA

It's a Hoax.

[DavidOster]

This is just the reprint of the text from a Doonesbury strip: note the G. Trudeau byline. "Bite the Wax Tadpole" is also a hoax. See http://www.snopes.com/humor/misxlate/madonna.htm for more information on the Madonna hoaz, and http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.htm for the "Bite the Wax Tadpole" hoax.

So Not Flowing Loudspeaker

[Mr_Plow]

This post has been translated into German via Babelfish, and then translated back into English
This reminds of me something fun, which I had a while rear side with some friends. By translating simply all my email with babelfish translated into another language (normally German) and back into our native tongue, you are left with an approximate value of the so not flowing loudspeaker. Granted, he is not necessarily in the best taste, but we are not necessarily the most diplomatic bundle of the people. More info at FOBONICS
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