Very likely a machine's idea of translation...

I'm doing a short document for a Houston client and was puzzled for a bit by the following address line:

Livermore, ПРИБЛИЗИТЕЛЬНО 94550

Of course, there should be a "CA" sitting where the ПРИБЛИЗИТЕЛЬНО lies.

The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that somewhere along the line, since ПРИБЛИЗИТЕЛЬНО means "APPROXIMATELY," either a really stupid human or a really smart computer decided that "CA" was the abbreviation commonly used for circa, which is typically used to indicate approximate dates (i.e., "this masterpiece was painted ca. 1312").

The end result is nonsense, of course, but I am left wondering: what was the original language of my source document (i.e., is it a translation of a translation?), and who/what compiled it?

No time to dwell on this, though. I've got to lay some words onto phosphor before the day burns away.

Cheers...

A chilling realization...

Here's another one:

ПУНКТ(ИЗДЕЛИЕ) нет

It's a heading in a table column, and should read something like "Item No." Instead, it's saying "Point(Article) no," which may not seem that far off, until I tell you that what corresponds to "no" in the original Russian ("нет") is the word that is the opposite of "yes."

So there I am, staring at my screen and feeling like an idiot, because I can't figure out what that "нет" is doing there.. and then it hits me!

This document (a request for a quote) contains material that has been machine-translated from English to Russian! The original English "Item No." was translated mindlessly, and the "No." was not parsed as the abbreviation for "number," but as "no" (as in "the-opposite-of-yes").

Ye gods.

Once it was "translated," the document was modified to reflect a Russian response to the RFQ, returned to the U.S., and then sent (eventually) to me for translation.

This would account for the numerous parenthetical inserts in the text (one is shown above), as the machine translation software(program) tried(attempted) to do a workchiplike job of offering(providing) suitable(appropriate) alternatives(variants) while rendering its translation, albeit at the expense of readability, I'm afraid.

Yech!

Depending on your point of view, I am either really, really screwed (I haven't much experience rendering back-translations of stuff spit out by a machine), or really, really liberated (anything I write, pretty much, I can't be faulted for).

Oh, well...

Cheers...

Seeds...

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway!
If you do good, people will accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway!
If you are successful, you will win
false friends and enemies.
Succeed anyway!
The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway!
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway!
What you spend years building may be
destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help
but may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway!
Give the world the best you have
and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway!
   -- Mother Teresa

A good day...

Today finally felt like a day off, despite having a translation to do.

The translation itself, as one can see from previous posts, was an adventure. Very definitely an Adventure in Back-Translation. Despite the fact I spent probably twice as much time as was necessary to do the job, it was interesting to see what "decisions" were made by the program that created the original Russian language travesty, and to guess what the original English was on that basis.

In the early afternoon, Drew and I went and helped one of our customers move her belongings into a rented storage shed. That took almost two hours, and we stopped off at the "Timbers" on the way home for a brew. Bonding, and all that...

The kids left Huntur with us later this afternoon to buy some items at the grocery store. Everyone left at the house had a lot of fun; Huntur is getting medium-good at strumming the guitar (instead of trying to pry the strings off of the thing), and we played our first game of catch (though I am sure she had no idea what the heck we were trying to accomplish).

Dinner was a joint affair. Drew made pork chops; I finished making the spaghetti squash that I baked yesterday evening, frying it up with three colors of pepper (green, red, and orange). Washed it all down with some mushroom soup and a Warsteiner beer. Mm-m.

Later in the evening, I spent some time trying to slay the dragon of being able to type in English and Russian on a Linux box. More specifically, inside of the X Windows system. Though I tried to follow the instructions that are available on my machine, I made no progress toward my goal. As of yet, this is not a Big Deal. OTOH, part of one of my proposed presentations for the ATA Conference in Atlanta has to do with doing just that under X, so it's not exactly something to be treated as a dead letter.

I find myself avoiding the Oscar telecast, since I couldn't care less who wins, and I also thus avoid any gratuitous outbursts of political zeal (which this year might include rants by designer-garbed celebrities or executives to the effect of how Hollyweird will suffer unless the digital industry is brought under Holly^H^H^H^H^H Congress' control).

I think I shall sneak off and engage in some rack drill...

Cheers...