We all know that translating things to other languages using Google Translate or for that matter any form of translation is not always perfect, especially if you are translating from one language family to another as I was (English to Chinese - that’s a western sub-branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages translated to one of the two branches of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages).
I’ve had all kinds of amusing things come up, especially if you keep translating the same phrase between languages and the most recent I have found (don’t ask me why I was translating this) is:
A few months ago I posted some audio files and a story about Emma Clark here. Emma is a British voice over artist who is probably most famous for her voice being used on the London Underground but last year she was sacked from this role following recording her own satirical alternatives and posting them up on her site. Check out the older post here or her web site here to listen to them. I think as I have already said that there was no need need to sack Emma and it’s all been very reactionary as opposed to reasonable, and as if to add to this on Emma’s site she has posted up some contact she had here from a major Australian voice over agency detailing how one of it’s clients Jake Downs has had his contract terminated by Sydney’s City Rail after recording similarly satirical spoof voice overs. With a slight twist, it seems the recordings actually made it into circulation either in stations or on the web, without anyone noticing! Excellent. City Rail had this to say:
“They’ve been there for months.” An embarrassed City Rail official Adam Wickleberry confessed. “The staff here neither noticed the humour nor saw anything untoward about them. We do fail to see the funny side of most things these days. I think you’ll find the ‘War on Terror’ has that effect on bureaucracy.”
Emma has since got a contract with sat nav company ALK and they have recorded their own spoofs as a subtle (ha) method to either avoid a repeat of the LG senario or to profit off the attention. I’d say it was a fantastic piece of marketing, but then again fantastic is usually used to refer to something not evil.
Also on Emma’s site are two games which are quite fun (the top one is my favourite because you can get it to say this about rubber goats and moist prostitutes).
We all know that translating things to other languages using Google Translate or for that matter any form of translation is not always perfect, especially if you are translating from one language family to another as I was (English to Chinese - that’s a western sub-branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages translated to one of the two branches of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages).