“Never Made Confidence with the Automatic Translations”

No doubt you’ve heard time and time again that machine translations always have loads of translation errors. Still, many people assume translation errors will be minimal for shorter texts of just a few words. Big mistake!

New translation tools like Blahblahfish.com offer proof of the subpar quality of machine translations by taking an English text, translating it into another language and then back into English. The resulting translation errors reveal just how far off machine translation can be – and some of them are side-splittingly funny.

If you had any doubt as to the untrustworthiness of machine translations, these examples of essential social phrases translated via Blahblahfish will leave no doubt that you should never trust machine translations – or “never made confidence with the automatic translations” as the English-French-English translation puts it. See if you can guess what each of the following lines is supposed to be before reading the explanation.

You open your growing

This is what results from the English-Japanese-English translation of “Your fly is open.” No doubt that if you tried to pass on this helpful tip to someone, you’d get some pretty confused looks. The German version, “Their fly is opened,” offers one of the most dead-on translations of the languages listed but even this will make for some social awkwardness as it leaves listeners uncomfortably staring at one another’s crotches while wondering whose fly is open.

Plea he is being ‘ group heartburn ] hook?

What you’re looking at above (bizarre punctuation and all) is the English-Welsh-English translation of “Where is the bathroom?” – no need to point out the problems with that one. The Korean version, “There is a bathroom to where?” isn’t too bad, although it does make it sound like you’re seeking a bathroom that also serves as a portal to another universe.

That milk has the gone failure

The English-Russian-English result for “that milk has gone bad” isn’t perfect but it will hopefully get the message across before you or someone else takes a sip of sour milk. The Spanish version, “that milk has bad gone,” is one of the best. Even the Welsh “I go I milk has walked ‘ heartburn evil” might be enough to get the message across. Surprisingly, “that milk has gone bad” seems to be one message that translates pretty effectively in any language.

Am not shooting! I’m a civilities!

Thankfully you would most likely never need to utilize the line “Do not shoot! I am a civilian!” in Norway because the Norwegian version above probably wouldn’t help you out much. The Greek version – “Do not shoot! I am citizen!” – might get you a little further initially, although once the gunmen find out you’re lying about your supposed Greek citizenship status, you might want to make a run for it.

Silly Examples, Serious Point

The sample translation errors given above are definitely ridiculous, but they do get the point across: machine translations are full of translation errors. The bottom line is that you can only rely on a fellow human being to avoid translation errors, even if you’re only translating a text of a few words. No machine will ever be able to correctly interpret all the colloquialisms, turns of phrase and general nuances that enrich each of the world’s languages.