Facebook and Twitter try to translate — but we still can’t understand
By Bethonie Butler of The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/facebook-and-twitter-try-to-translate--but-we-still-cant-understand/2012/02/17/gIQAi6pIKR_blog.html
The Internet can teach us many things, from how to do a newsprint manicure to how to pronounce vichyssoise. But if you’re counting on social media networks to help you parler français, you might find yourself lost in translation.
A Google translation of a BBC Arabic tweet offers a kind of surrealist haiku. In October, Facebook quietly rolled out a translation feature powered by Microsoft Bing. It first showed up on Facebook pages but recently made its way to Facebook profiles.
Despite recent efforts to optimise machine translation, it’s no secret that Web translation tools such as Yahoo! Babelfish and Google Translate have a hard time navigating slang and idiomatic expressions. And the results are often hilarious.
Take for example, the update that popped into my own Facebook feed on Thursday. A friend in Brazil posted that she had been shopping for festive items to don at her first Carnaval in years. “After five years with no Carnaval,” the translation read, “gotta take up saw.”
Huh?
What she’d actually said was that she had to make up for lost time. Semantics.
The fun doesn’t stop with Facebook. Tweets, too, can be translated, if you’re browsing in Google Chrome.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently opened a Twitter account. In one Feb.15 tweet, Sarkozy wrote (we think) that he promised to break down barriers to progress in his country.
The translation, powered by Google Translate, reads: “Every time there is a blockage, I’ll cut the French people.”
If you want a French translation you can be sure of, contact us on info@talkingheads.gb.com or 0114 257 2077.
world news
Published on 22. February 2012 12:50 by Laurianne
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