Taste the translation

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Does anyone know why I can't seem to embed this (yes, using the embed code, not the link below), apart from innate stupidity? Anyway, go to http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=22460&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

[Callaina]

I lost it at "rape spinach", followed by the frypan smash

 

[Imber Ranae]

I imagine 'rape spinach' is a mistranslation of 'rape greens', which are the leaves of the rapeseed plant (often referred to by the more palatable name 'canola', a particular cultivar of rapeseed). I think they're mostly used in East Asian cuisine.

 

[Callaina]

It came up in the Cato excerpt we were reading, actually (rapeseed I mean.) At least, that was how the dictionary translated it.

 

[Iohannes Aurum]

There are some more funny but unintentional mistranslations here: http://engrish.com

 

[Callaina]

Although, if you actually pause it at 0:33 or so, you can see that the Elan translation isn't that much better than the Google Translate version. There's less bizarreness, to be sure (horses and flyers and the rest) but it's far from correct English.

Actually, looking at the two versions even more closely: they cheated. They cleaned up the Elan version and made the Google Translate version weirder. If someone wrote "Cut lots of coins after boiled, and discard the part of the roots" I would have very little trouble figuring out what was meant, but they morphed that into "Discard roots by cutting lots of coins."

And what the heck does "I crunched under out after boiled" (Elan) mean?