
An interesting Google Translate quirk - DavidSJ
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?text=Nous+parlons+fran%C3%A7ais+ensemble.&langpair=fr%7Cen#fr|en|Nous%20parlons%20fran%C3%A7ais%20ensemble.
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litewulf
Is this a quirk of statistical machine translation where the word English
shows up in English texts where Francais would show up in French texts?

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tr4nslator
It's a lesson in the difference between _translation_ and _localization_.

In this case, Google's approach confuses the latter for the former, because
its corpus contains parallel texts that have not only been translated (into a
different language), but also localized (into a different locale). For
example, it may be extrapolating incorrectly from a French document and an
English document with the following phrases in the same location:

    
    
      FR Cliquez ici pour la version anglaise.
      EN Click here for the French version.
    

This sign is another good example of how parallel texts are not always
translations:

<http://flickr.com/photos/jadelin/2205088201/>

(the Japanese "おかえりなさい" here means "Welcome home")

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staunch
In your Japanese airport example I think they're intentionally not the same
phrase. "Welcome back" to the Japanese people and "Welcome to Japan" to the
foreigners.

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tr4nslator
Yes, that is why it's not a translation, but a localization (you know, for the
locals).

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staunch
Gotcha.

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iseff
Now remove the period at the end of the URL. :)

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DavidSJ
Interestingly, if you remove "ensemble", then it reverses it.

So:

"Nous parlons français ensemble." -> "We speak English together."

"Nous parlons français ensemble" -> "We all speak French"

"Nous parlons français." -> "We speak French."

"Nous parlons français" -> "We speak English"

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DougBTX
Also, it is language dependant, in German we speak French together:

Wir sprechen französisch zusammen

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jonas_b
Ive had this with Swedish as well.

Jag kan inte prata svenska

turns into:

I can't speak English

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jcl
Nice. It looks like it's confusing the different meanings of "English": "a
language originating in England" vs. "native tongue".

If you're translating something like "Give it to me in plain English", you'd
want the second meaning. Likewise, "It's Greek to me" doesn't hold the quite
same weight when translated literally into Greek.

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alexandros
Yeap. In Greek we say 'It's chinese to me'. I wonder what the chinese say :)

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silentbicycle
Good question. After a bit of searching, I found these nation / translation
tables. Neat!

    
    
      * http://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/incomprehensible.php
      * http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Greek-to-me

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ram1024
HAH

it's a conSPIRACY!

