Comments on: Professor Harm tired cherry

By: Test

Test — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:47:19 +0000

Hi all!

G’night

By: So many translations « RuudVisser.com

So many translations « RuudVisser.com — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:55:19 +0000

[...] many translations The automatic translation service from Babel Fish remains a source of fun. As Tersie discovered, the phrase so many birds is translated as zo vele vogels. While technically [...]

By: SN

SN — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:12:37 +0000

For every target language, Babelfish apparently uses diferent algorithms to analyse the source language. Beuker in the Dutch-to-French version is correctly rendered as Beuker…

By: bertil

bertil — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:48:14 +0000

The site of the Meertens Instituut says that the name Beukers is related to a profession:
http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nfd/detail_naam.php?naam=Beuker

My 1970 Dikke Van Dale writes that “beuken” means to hit the stockfish until it becomes soft. Apparently, it used to be someone’s profession to do this all day.

On a Language Log related sidenote: I was a bit surprised to see the Eskimo snow hoax translated into a Dutch water hoax, in last week’s NRC by someone from Leiden university.

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:39:58 +0000

It seems clear that Babelfish simply does not recognize the open single quote as valid Dutch, so it inserts it into the output as a stand-alone word, the first word in the sentence (though it cannot be capitalized). Since “Magnifiek” is no longer quoted, it must be an adverb modifying “reageert”, and since it is no longer the first word in the sentence, it is not capitalized either.

Why it can’t deal with “hoogleraar” is a mystery.

By: gerard

gerard — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:51:49 +0000

Somehow Babelfish has been made to conceive of the word ‘beu’ as an extremely productive adjectival prefix (or whatever it is called in linguistics).

By the way, ‘beuvisser’ yields ‘tired fisherman’…

By: Ruud

Ruud — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:34:35 +0000

The "tired cherry" pattern also holds for other fruits, including those with more than one syllable: beupeer (pear), beuappel (apple), beubanaan (banana), beumandarijn (mandarin) and even beusinaasappel (orange) are all translated as tired X. Don't like fruits? Babel Fish provides tired vegetables as well, like beusla (lettuce) and beuwortel (carrot). That goes with a beubiefstuk (steak) and some beuaardappelen (potatoes); beupatat (fries/chips) is not on the menu, unfortunately. All of this is served by be(a)utiful, though somewhat weary, beumannen (men) and beuvrouwen (women) in your local beurestaurant. Oddly, another Dutch word for tired (in the sense of needing sleep), moe, does not produce tired X with any of the words above. Why not? Or perhaps the better question is, why does it happen with beu? I don't know any Dutch compound words with beu as the first part, certainly not if the second part is a noun. I can also answer the question from my previous comment: Babel Fish does not invent a space. It simply thinks all these beuxyz words are compounds. It goes even further, correctly picking out the adjectives zoete and rode in beuzoetekers and beurodekers to yield tired sweet cherry and tired red cherry.

By: gerard

gerard — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:03:22 +0000

Beats me. I have never seen it do that before, though – the truth be said – I hardly ever use it, being a living and breathing translator myself. It does the same with the made up name Beubeuk, rendering ‘tired beech’. That would seem to suggest a pattern, but Beueik is left untranslated.

By: Ruud

Ruud — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:37:32 +0000

Ingenious. That does raise another question, though: why does Babel Fish invent a space between beu and kers?

By: gerard

gerard — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:22:03 +0000

beu (ik ben het beu) = tired
kers = cherry