Google Translator: Russia and Mordor

Good morning!

Yesterday I read an article about a “fantastic” mistake of Google Translator. Apparently in the translation from Ukranian into Russian, the sentence “Russian Federation” was translated like “Mordor”, the fictitious land of The Lord of The Rings ruled by the evil Sauron.

Logically, Russia doesn't mean Mordor, but it was a translation mistake, because Google Translator works with statistics and it chose wrong with the analysis of all documents that it uses. Google Translator doesn't apply gramatical rules and that's why it makes this kind of mistakes.

The reflection about this topic is not to use directly a translation from an automatic traslator. You have to check it always or, if the text has a languages that you don't control, ask for help. A translator or proofreader will help you. This mistake about Mordor is very showy, but it is possible that the translator will make some unnoticed mistakes and your text won't have the quality that it requires.

Here you have the article in Spanish. 

Open Source: how to jump on the bandwagon

Good morning and happy new year!

Today I was reading an article about Open Source and I have discovered an expression that I didn't know in English: jump on the bandwagon. For those who don't know the meaning, jump on the bandwagon means to play along or take advantage of something that is already working. In Spanish means subirse al carro. It has nothing to do with a real wagon.

As you can see, the translation may be literal: saltar o subirse al carro. However, in order to understand the meaning, it is necessary to know the connotation of the expression.

If you don't recognize some expression when you read it, my piece of advice is to read the complete phrase or paragraph. The context will help you to understand the meaning. In addition, you can go to a translator, dictionary or glossary to check it and learn something new.

I let you here the article about Open Source. It is very interesting and you can also improve your English. Just like me.

Regards!

My new project: Robles Traducciones

Hello!

Today I'm happy to tell you about my new translation project "Robles Traducciones". I have created a new account on Google+ in order to offer my services as a translator.

In this blog, I have told you about different types of translation, software for translators, proofreaders and editors, problems and translation mistakes, own experiences and curious cases... I have had also the opportunity to have some experiences as a translator and now I prove professionally through "Robles Traducciones".

If you have followed me a little, you will know that my work languages ​​are English and German, and of course the Spanish as my mother tongue. If you need a professional translation into or from any of these languages, ​​do not hesitate to contact me via roblestraducciones@gmail.com. Now I show you too some advertisements, so you can share it if you are interested or if you know someone who may be interested.

· Mil anuncios.com

· Anuncios

I will keep on sharing with you curiosities and interesting issues about translation.

Thank you.

Controversial false typo: Spanish literary prize (Premio Planeta)

Good evening. Social networks have today echoed a typo in one of the headlines of spanish tv news Antena 3. The headline said: Hoy se folla el premio planeta (Today it fucks the Premio Planeta. In Spanish, the verb fallar [award] is similar to follar [fuck]). Later it was known that it was a fake. But if it had been real, it would have possibly been a typo and the word emerged from this change in a single letter it would have caused many jokes. What I'm going to do in this post is to analyze this (false) mistake.

As I said, it would have been a typo. When we write in a computer it is not difficult to press a key in place of another one, and even more if we write fast. But, why would have emerged this controversial word? The headlines have a very limited format, that is, in a very short space they should explain the news as clearly as possible. Therefore, if we talk about the result of a contest (in this case the spanish famous literary contest that brings the publisher Editorial Planeta), the word fallar is short and concise. In another context, it would have been possible to use synonymous (settle/solve the contest, decide the winner), but in a headline it would have been too long. In addition, the presenter says always more information.

In any case, although this hasn't been a mistake of the tv program, we must revise everything we write, and if we even have some mistakes, remember el que tiene boca se equivoca ;)

Translation mistakes (III): how to change the cartridges in the printer

Good morning. Today I'm going to show you a fragment of a flyer that explains how to change the cartridges in the printer. Because of the information that I deduce of the complete text, I think that it is a translation from French. French is the first language, in which everything is explained and, in case of doubts, it refers to a website with domain .fr.

Here I show the text:

As you can see, there are punctuation mistakes: (*Felicidades! because in Spanish we use both exclamation points, blank space between colon and the rest of the text, capital letter after a comma), grammatical errors (*es remanufacturado) where it would be better the passive voice, accentuation (*vació when the correct word here is vacío, *pagina, *esta) and bad expression in general.

Now, If you want to see my proposed correction into Spanish, click here.