OT: Bad translations

[abcde1234]

On Wednesday, 26 September 2018 at 12:57:21 UTC, ShadoLight wrote:
> 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!"

In case you missed it, this was well spreaded in the tech news 
last month or so:

https://translate.google.fr/?hl=fr#so/en/ngoo%20m%20goon%20goob%20goo%20goo%20goo%20mgoo%20goo%20goo%20goo%20goo%20goo%20m%20goo

Still progress to do.