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 correct, that sounds rather archaic. We would typically say zo veel vogels.
I wondered whether Babel Fish was simply thrown off by the lack of context, so I feeded it the full sentence I see so many birds in the sky. The result: Ik zie zo vele vogels in de hemel. That is a good translation, but again has the archaic vele instead of the common veel. It also gives hemel instead of lucht for sky; hemel is much closer in meaning to heaven. Incidentally, this is one of a few sentences with the words in exactly the same order in Dutch and in English, so all words translate one on one. Usually Dutch puts the verb in a different location.
As I was typing this post, I heard the traffic information on the radio, so I tried another sentence: There are so many traffic jams today. This becomes Er is vandaag zo vele verkeersjam. That’s correct… sort of. Jam is a difficult word to translate, since it has two completely different meanings: traffic congestion or the jelly you put on your toast. The Fish oddly seems to have taken the second one, creating a Dutch sentence that literally means There is so much traffic jelly today. Try putting that on your toast!
Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 10:32 |
There was not so much traffic jelly today for me. :-)
But that’s probably because it’s spring holiday (voorjaarsvakantie).
Thursday, March 1, 2007 at 11:56 |
I think maybe they leave things just a little “off” to give you something to laugh about. How else can the phrase “there are so many traffic jams today” be interesting? :)
Besides that – you get what you pay for. It is a free translator after all. It’s still fun to use.
Monday, June 18, 2007 at 18:44 |
I think maybe they leave things just a little “off” to give you something to laugh about.
Well, actually, no. Babelfish is a licensed user of Systran, and Systran is a Very Serious rough-translation company, used worldwide to render “80% correct” (their numbers) draft translations of documents, which can then be smoothed by a bilingual editor. It’s very much in Systran’s interest not to make mistakes, at least those they can catch without slowing down the translation too much (Babelfish uses Systran on the fastest and least thorough setting).
As for jam in English, both uses are special cases of the original verbal sense, ‘crush or squeeze by pressure’.