Google Translate is pretty weak
A friend of mine ran some lyrics through Google Translate today, and came back with a really surprising translation that didn’t capture the original meaning very well at all. Here’s the phrase (from the punk band Die Toten Hosen) in the original German (warning, there is a bad word in here, so if you’re easily offended, you shouldn’t read it–or be on this blog at all, really):
Wir haben bis heute geglaubt,
dass ihr Arschlöcher seid, aber
das ist gar nicht wahr.
Here’s what it means (my translation):
Until today we all believed
That you were all just assholes
But that’s just simply not true
Here’s what Babelfish, the Yahoo translation engine, says:
We believed until today
that it ass holes are,
but that is not true at all.
And here’s what Google got:
We have to believe today,
that ye are bastards, but
This is not true.
Ok, first of all: ye??? What the hell is that all about? Is this 1875? Also, the tense is completely wrong. Geglaubt doesn’t mean ‘believe,’ it means ‘believed’ and is firmly past tense. The other possible meaning could be the adjective ‘believed,’ as in ‘this person is to be believed,’ but that’s not how Google is translating it. Additionally, the dirty word, Arschlöcher, is literally ‘arsch,’ or ‘ass’ combined with ‘loch’ or ‘hole.’ How Google gets ‘bastards’ out of that is beyond me–after all, it’s not like English can’t term someone both an ‘asshole’ and a ‘bastard.’ That’s a lot of mistakes for a very simple, three line phrase. Apparently, sticking with Babelfish is the right way to go, for now at least.
Comments
Matt (Dec 04, 2009)
Found something humorous, ye did!
Vasken (Dec 04, 2009)
I know! I’m buying http://bringbackye.com as we speak
Adolf Schicklgruber (Dec 21, 2009)
The haiku version:
Until today we thought
you were assholes.
But that is not true
at all.