5 ms·
I think I have a better one. I was trying to download some software from a Japanese website (this was about 10 yrs ago I think). There was an entire survey you
by miki123211 2y ago
I think I have a better one.
I was trying to download some software from a Japanese website (this was about 10 yrs ago I think). There was an entire survey you had to fill out first. Since I speak no Japanese, I naturally used Google Translate (to Polish, not even to English).
That survey had a "gender" field, and the options were something like "person" and "woman".
Then there are the automatic (mis)translations of button labels and other similar strings in software, where the translating tool often only has a single and ambiguous word to go on, with no context whatsoever.
THe funniest ones I've seen are "branch" (satellite office) versus "branch" (of a tree), "book" (a flight) versus "book" (something you read), "character" (ASCII or Unicode) versus "character" (in a story), "clear" (to remove all) versus "clear" (translated as "cloudless", referring to the sky), "letters" (delivered by a postman) versus "letters" (and not digits), "rate" (how fast. i.e. speech rate) versus "rate" (how much you charge per minute), "prune" (remove all) versus "prune" (dried plum), "manual" (and not automatic) versus "manual" (a user manual), "clubs" (places you go to) versus "clubs" (and not diamonds or spades, "queen of clubs" hav a particularly interesting meaning here), "number" (that you call) versus "number" (of things), "at" (@) versus at (home), "tab" (key) versus "tab" (in a browser), "close" (to me) versus "close" (something), "back" (button) versus "back" (a body part), as well as all the "party" (adventuring team in an RPG) versus "party" (legal entity, i.e. "third party") versus "party" (as in an event you have fun at) shenanigans.
Mistakes like these often hide in accessibility labels, and are hence far more obvious to screen reader users. In normal UI, they're usually found quickly enough that users never notice, but accessibility labels are often overlooked when testing translations.
- climb_stealth 2y agoHah! I fondly remember some Linux distro that had the Desktop translated to a literal table top. Translating without context must be really tough. Especially with a language like English that is utterly ambiguous.
- mook 2y agoIn Chinese Windows, Desktop has been officially translated as literal table top since at least Windows 95. I don't see the issue here XD
- climb_stealth 2y agoNow I wonder if English speaking people think of it as a literal table top. I always thought it stands on its own.
- pjc50 2y agoThere was a fun one going around where the title of the game "Watchdogs" had turned into Norwegian for "look at dogs". Re: gender, there's all sorts of chaos going between languages which have no grammatical gender (CJK languages, Finnish etc) and those which have mandatory grammatical gender (Latin languages), because the information may simply not be available in the same sentence. So you get obvious misgenderings of "(female name) .. he" or vice versa.
- miki123211 2y agoAnd then there's the "man" (not a female) versus "man" (as in "human", i.e. "first ,man on the moon" / "all men are created equal").