translation – Brian of London https://brianoflondon.me The collected works of Brian of London Wed, 02 Oct 2019 06:40:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5 https://i0.wp.com/brianoflondon.me/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cropped-Brian-of-London-with-sig-600x600.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 translation – Brian of London https://brianoflondon.me 32 32 156832491 What happens when you reply to Donald Trump and tell him not to trust China? https://brianoflondon.me/2019/10/what-happens-when-you-reply-to-donald-trump-and-tell-him-not-to-trust-china/ https://brianoflondon.me/2019/10/what-happens-when-you-reply-to-donald-trump-and-tell-him-not-to-trust-china/#respond Wed, 02 Oct 2019 06:30:44 +0000 https://brianoflondon.me/?p=1505 Yesterday Trump tweeted the following congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people for the 70th anniversary of the cultural revolution which murdered millions of people:

So I responded with a tweet invoking my friend Avi Yemini’s now famous internet meme:

If you don’t know the video you can see that in Avi’s tweet which he put up just a few minutes behind mine:

But what interests me is the utter failure of Google Translate to come up with anything approaching a passable translation of all the insults that were hurled my way by an army of Chinese twitter accounts, bots or not.

I’ll start with just about the only one that Google Translate gets right.

“Why didn’t Hitler kill you?”

Food seems to be a common theme.

"Your mom will buy food within three days.”
“Your mom will buy food within three days.”

Once again food purchasing, but this time with chess! Is an accusation of playing chess a reference to the cultural revolution and the destruction of the bourgeois middle class?

“Your dad will be accused of playing chess, your mother must double the purchase of food.”
“Your dad will be accused of playing chess, your mother must double the purchase of food.”

Now we move on to the medicine section with some capitalism hate thrown in.

“Your mother will buy medicine and will increase the price.”
“Your mother will buy medicine and will increase the price.”

Insults about being a poor family man?

“Your mother as not taught you how to call your grandson?"
“Your mother as not taught you how to call your grandson?”

And we’ll end with possibly my favourite purely because it is so obviously completely without meaning.

“Your dad sells eucalyptus”
“Your dad sells eucalyptus”

How on earth can anyone claim that the world is anywhere near approaching some kind of useful, general Artificial Intelligence when the wealthiest company in the world can’t even begin to translate what are probably common curses from a language spoken by a billion people?

P.S. if anyone can actually read Chinese characters and give me real translations I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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