On Wednesday, 26 September 2018 at 02:12:07 UTC, Ali Çehreli
wrote:
On 09/24/2018 08:17 AM, 0xEAB wrote:
> - Non-idiomatic translations of tech terms [2]
[snip]
English message was something like "No memory left" and the
German translation was "No memory on the left hand side" :)
Ali
Not sure if this was not just some urban legend, but there was a
delightful story back in the late 80s/early 90s about the early
translation programs. They were in particular not very good at
idiomatic translations, so people would play with idiomatic
expressions from language X (say english) to language Y, and then
back from Y to X - and then see what was returned.
Apparently the expression "the spirit is willing but the flesh is
weak" translated to Russian and back was returned by one such
program as:
"The vodka is good but the meat is rotten!"
