OT: Bad translations

[ShadoLight]

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!"