Lost in translation

The babel fish is a great widget in my blog. Now I can translate my blog to other languages too. I know the babel fish translations are not grammatically correct or perfect. As Wikipedia puts it: the best that is claimed is that it can show the gist of a page or text.

So, I try to translate my site to mandarin,
babelfish.JPG

look what I got:
chinese8.jpg

This seems acceptable enough. I don’t read Chinese, but I know enough characters to allow me to understand the meaning of the sentence. Anyway, let me know if I am wrong, if you read Chinese please let me know if the translations are good?

And look! Awesome findings in the blog link too:
bloglinkch.JPG

Wait! Things are not getting that interesting until Winston bring this up to me:

chinese2.jpg

What? I can confirm certainly those does not spell Jenny How!! The last 2 characters “怎么” are only attached to questions. I guess they have taken my surname How as a question!!!!

So what does “雌鸟” means? I went into babel fish:

chinese3.jpg

AND THE RESULT:

chinese4.jpg

I am totally speechless by now!
214592_disappointed_egg.jpg

So, how does your blog translate to?! Share me your thoughts!


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9 Comments so far

  1. Alex Yeo on April 27th, 2007
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    Those translation always sucks. In fact, I tried before. Translating from english to chinese. Individually, each chinese character is “correct”, but if you lump them together to form a sentence, it totally has no meaning! Hahah.

  2. Jenny on April 27th, 2007
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    Hi Alex, have to agree with you. They are not always grammatically correct but it does make selling internationally easier at time.

  3. Chino on April 28th, 2007
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    they do suck all the time. That’s why when I want to translate something, I always start with…

    “Sorry for my bad …” then translate it to that language. haha

  4. Markk on April 30th, 2007
    MyAvatars 0.2

    Hi! Just wondering why Malaysian bloggers usually end their comment with a “haha”? I notice this quite often in many comments on other Malaysian blogs, too. Is it something funny that makes you laugh? Geez!

  5. Jenny on April 30th, 2007
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    Hi Markk, actually I didn’t really realised it, but Alex here is from Singapore and Chino is from Philippines. I guess Asians like to end comments with smiles, so they put haha or little smilies? Alex and Chino, right? haha…

  6. Alex Yeo on April 30th, 2007
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    Yeah. Jenny, you are right…

    Sometimes, I think comments can be a little more informal than a post.

    Markk, so haha-ing means we are saying in a casual and “friendly” way. If we think it’s humourous, we will have “haha” too! :D

  7. Beelee on April 30th, 2007
    MyAvatars 0.2

    I like your name’s translation .. it’s funny ;o)

  8. { K } on May 1st, 2007
    MyAvatars 0.2

    lol @ Female bird how hahaha

    i wonder how would babelfish read my chinese name :???: nice blog! :D

  9. Sam Chan on May 15th, 2007
    MyAvatars 0.2

    I believe when it comes to translation, no computer can beat a human translator! My blog contains a lot of Quotes. I think many translated Quotes will be for a good laugh to those who can understand the translated language.

    Looks like, I should consider removing it eventually!

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