Black AM of Peter
Peter Black AM is proudly boasting of how he has enabled his blog to be translated into various languages by adding a link for the Babelfish translation tool to his weblog.
Interestingly, this has the effect of translating the name of his blog in French into Noir AM de Peter, or Black AM of Peter. In Spanish, it is Negro de Peter. In Italian, Nero de Peter. In German, it becomes Peter Schwarzes Morgens. I haven't checked the other languages. I'm not sure this is what Peter had in mind.
If you then link to my blog from the French version of Peter's blog, you soon find out how problematic the translations become. Leaving aside Babelfish's inability to get the French for Wales right (Pays de Galles, not Pays de Gales), you end up with a curious mix of Welsh and French in the subtitle of my blog.
But even more entertainingly, where I wrote yesterday in my post on Cardiff City:
'I'm a fan who became a politician, not a politician who became a fan' this has been translated as
'Je suis un ventilateur qui est allé bien à un politicien, pas un politicien qui est devenu un ventilateur.'
A 'ventilateur' is an electric fan designed to cool you down.
Peter Black is the Lib Dem education spokesperson, by the way. I wonder what their policy is on learning modern languages?
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3 comments:
I had noticed these little quirks but you cannot blame me for trying, Leighton. After all it had potential for increasing access to the blog. Clearly, babelfish still needs a lot of work,
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This competition between you two is great fun and is bound to spur you both on to greater blogging efforts. Could the two of you get yourselves appointed onto the sleepy committee that manages the Assembly website and do something about it?
'Blogio', Leighton? And that's better than Babelfish?
I've borrowed 'blogio' from one of the Welsh language blogs.
The Assembly website is probably the worst in the Western world and life is too short to get involved with it!
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