As many of you know, I’m a Linux freak. Most, if not all, Linux distros ship with a version of the old UNIX fortune program. fortune is a command-line program that simply returns a random piece of text from one of its files when executed. Most of these pieces of text are in English, which only makes sense for an American company. Occasionally, however, the little program spits up something in a foreign tongue. This time, it was an Albert Einstein quote in the original German. As I was online, I went to the http://www.dictionary.com translation program to get an idea of what Big Al was on about
An old Internet hand, I’ve come to expect relatively crappy machine translation. I’ve gotten a few chuckles out of chain-translation (English->German->French->English or some similar convoluted path), so I went into this with lowered expectations.
What I got made me wonder if the program hadn’t been infested by crack monkeys.
Original Quote: “Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.”
Dictionary.com Translation: “The gentleman God is not refined is however malicious it.”
Is that so?
After a bit, I recognized it: “The ways of God may be subtle, but He is never malicious.” (Or something similar. I’ve forgotten the canonical translation.)
Have any other Dopers had similar experiences with machine translation?
– August “Invisible, insane” Derleth