4 ms·

Same thing happened in Croatia in the 90s. Silly words were introduced and then people made up even sillier words to make fun of it leading to insanities like:

Same thing happened in Croatia in the 90s. Silly words were introduced and then people made up even sillier words to make fun of it leading to insanities like: - čigrasto pamtilo "peg-top-like memorizer" for a floppy disk - čigrasto velepamtilo "peg-top-like big memorizer" for a hard disk - stolno potezalo - "tabletop pull-arounder" for a mouse After a while, nobody was certain what was a real term and what was a joke one, so most of it is abandoned now and mostly English terms are used.

sanxiyn 6y ago
I am not sure why that failed, but that's probably because I don't get Croatian nuances. In Korea disk is translated as "storage device" and it stuck. In general, you can make non-silly translation instead of silly translation, and non-silly translations do stick.
Tade0 6y ago
I see there was no shortage of creative self-proclaimed linguists in these parts of the lands behind the iron curtain as well. Our expression for "mouse" was quite byzantine: "manipulator stołowo-kulotoczny" (table sphererolling manipulator?). This just begs for a TLA like "MSK".
- sanxiyn 6y ago
  Korean translation of "mouse" was "squirrel", although ultimately it lost to a loan. I can't imagine why anyone thought that long-winded translation in Polish would stick. Squirrel was chosen because it is considered cute, but mouse is considered dirty. I think that kind of consideration of association is important in translation.
  - fludlight 6y ago
    > Squirrel was chosen because it is considered cute, but mouse is considered dirty. That's a great example of the difference between translation and localization.
jhanschoo 6y ago
Well to someone who have never heard of them, "floppy disk" and "mouse" are themselves very comical words to describe the machinery they refer to. The worst part about those calques are their lack of brevity.
- kube-system 6y ago
  They were funny to many native English speakers in the 90's too.

sanxiyn 6y ago

I am not sure why that failed, but that's probably because I don't get Croatian nuances. In Korea disk is translated as "storage device" and it stuck. In general, you can make non-silly translation instead of silly translation, and non-silly translations do stick.

Tade0 6y ago

I see there was no shortage of creative self-proclaimed linguists in these parts of the lands behind the iron curtain as well. Our expression for "mouse" was quite byzantine: "manipulator stołowo-kulotoczny" (table sphererolling manipulator?). This just begs for a TLA like "MSK".

sanxiyn 6y ago
Korean translation of "mouse" was "squirrel", although ultimately it lost to a loan. I can't imagine why anyone thought that long-winded translation in Polish would stick. Squirrel was chosen because it is considered cute, but mouse is considered dirty. I think that kind of consideration of association is important in translation.
- fludlight 6y ago
  > Squirrel was chosen because it is considered cute, but mouse is considered dirty. That's a great example of the difference between translation and localization.

jhanschoo 6y ago

Well to someone who have never heard of them, "floppy disk" and "mouse" are themselves very comical words to describe the machinery they refer to. The worst part about those calques are their lack of brevity.

kube-system 6y ago
They were funny to many native English speakers in the 90's too.