Stupid Google Tricks

Google offers a language translation engine. While it is a useful tool, it's hardly perfect. For example, I often miss deliveries because the couriers are too timid, so I decided to make a sign for my apartment door reading, "Please Knock Loudly". It seemed like a good idea for it to also be in Spanish. Translating three simple word shouldn't be too hard, right? Well ...

What I got was "Por favor golpes en alta voz." Which means "Please blows in high voice."

Perfect.

For more of this type of fun, try taking a story, run it through the translator and then run the results through again translating it back into English. I did this with some of my own pages and the results were a thing of beauty.

"When I was 20 years old, I came out of the closet," translated into French and back into English became "When I was 20 years old, I emerged from the cabinet." When I translated my blog into Spanish, "Obnoxious and Inappropriate" became "Disagreeable and Inadequate" and into French it became "Unpleasant and Inadequate."

Priceless.