Get It Name Right!

Haon · September 22, 2002, 03:49

I was in a software store and on the box for Alphha Centuri it had

"The Future of Mind"

Why cant they just get it to say "The Future of Mankind!" Is it that hard

?

Mr. President · September 22, 2002, 03:55

Where was the software store? In a non-English-speaking country, getting"The Future of Mankind" might be hard.

Also, I hate to point out errors like this, but you wrote

Quote:

Get It Name Right!

in the thread title, but on the first line you have

Quote:

Alphha Centuri

which I assume you didn't do on purpose.

Main_Brain · September 22, 2002, 06:31

Beaten with a Lipstick I assume

gwillybj · September 22, 2002, 14:07

Translations of "The Future of Mankind" from English obtained at http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn

En Français: Le futur de l'humanité
Auf Deutsch: Die Zukunft der Menschheit
In Italiano: Il futuro di umanità
Em Português: O futuro da humanidade
En Español: El futuro de la humanidad

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are also available, but I can't copy-and-paste the characters here. They are all replaced by question marks

No point being made, just killing time

MariOne · September 23, 2002, 04:27

Looks like the only one babelfish got wrong is the italian one.
In the 4 others it correctly reported the genitive case reference with preposition AND article, which it failed to do in italian.

de l'
der (here only the article is used, 'of' is expressed by the genitive declension)
da (in portuguese the form is *extremely* contrapted

)
de la

correct italian form is
Il futuro dell'umanità

Babelfish form indeed sounds rather illiterate to a native italian speaker, or maybe like a comic german or russian movie character would say it

BTW, what was it all about???

MattyBoy · September 23, 2002, 22:14

Babelfish looks great.

Any idea how/where to translate English into Japanese in english alphabet?

Cybergod · September 24, 2002, 14:01

Quote:

Any idea how/where to translate English into Japanese in english alphabet?

Try one of the online translators.

BTW It could have been a typo : Future of Mankind

BustaMike · September 24, 2002, 18:29

Wrong translations are great. Anyone remember the Jurassic Park arcade game? It had great quotes like "Make dinosaur become quiet and escape island."

Mr. President · September 24, 2002, 19:44

And then of course there's the old favorite "All your base . . ."

Adalbertus · September 26, 2002, 15:03

Quote:

Looks like the only one babelfish got wrong is the italian one.

The French version probably had been better
L'avenir de l'humanité
(although I'm not the ultimate expert in French) - "futur" as a noun seems to be the grammatical term only.
German is correct.
And about the Italian, it is a bitter revenge to what Italian translators did do to other languages. Only one example: On a glass of pesto sauce, the usual "best before end:" reads in German "Am besten vor Datum auf Fertigkleidung" (put it preferably before date on confectioned clothes). I'm still thinking hard about how they arrived at this translation - maybe the italian "confezione" means also "label".

Straybow · September 27, 2002, 03:01

As somebody said: verbing wierds language.

MariOne · September 27, 2002, 06:25

ROTFL
Yeah, that's why I usually refuse to buy italian localisations of english games!

'Confezione' only very vaguely refers to clothes, it might be maybe only its 4th or 5th meaning, hinting to the tailoring process of a suit (and in such case a high-fashion connotation is intended, or... made believe!

).
It more simply means both "manifacturing" (not exactly in industrial sense, but rather craftmanship) or "packaging". The latter being the everyday use.

In printed messages, it is used becaus it gives a more technical impression than simply saying "on the box"

Quote:

I'm still thinking hard about how they arrived at this translation

I might answer you, as I "might imagine" how an italian could have reasoned

Am besten = at best
vor Datum = before the date
auf Fertigkleidung = ....

well, this is harder

first, I guess that "an der" could have been grammatically better than simply "auf"
then, to a german-stuttering italian, "Fertigkleidung" sounds like "final dress", but in this context it was for sure interpreted as "final/outer cover/wrap/envelope" as in "at the end of the packaging process you 'dress' or cover the glass bottle with a plastic film or paper label...

"

Thus:
"at best before the date on packaging"...
I know, it's funny, but then you should search the web for "engrish"

BTW, which would be the correct, natural german way to say "best before end:" ?

PS: in italian, while pesto IS a sauce, you never say "pesto sauce". You can have a "tomato sauce", but "pesto" defines in itself the fact that it's a sauce.
Just like you don't say "mayo sauce" or "ketchup sauce" when you want to refer to plain mayonnaise or ketchup themselves...

Back on topic (

),
Il futuro della razza umana (human race rather than mankind)
wold have sounded maybe less literary but more technically precise...

Clear Skies · September 27, 2002, 17:42

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Kassiopeia · September 27, 2002, 19:51

Suomeksi: Ihmiskunnan tulevaisuus

BustaMike · September 28, 2002, 00:46

das ist mine offa (think I spelled that right)

Adalbertus · September 28, 2002, 03:22

MariOne, remembering more precisely, italian didn't mention "confezione" but the french translation had "confection" - which means manufacturing but also manufactured clothes. And German uses Konfektion for manufactured clothes, also. Maybe that's it: They made a strange French translation which got translated to German by some humorous translator.

Quote:

Ich bin ein Berliner!

You're living dangerous. There was a person from America who said this, and later there was someone else who tried to verify that he is really filled with jam. (Berliner is a sort of doughnut without its famous hole, but filled with jam.)

BustaMike, if you meant "Das ist mein Affe" you're out of luck.

Mr. President · September 28, 2002, 03:27

Bahasa Indonesia: Masa Depan Manusia

BustaMike · September 28, 2002, 05:40

Yeah, so my german is limited to one ridiculous phrase that I couldn't even spell. Could be worse.

Adalbertus · September 28, 2002, 06:03

Anyway, with some luck and the help of a picture I was able to figure out what you meant. And unless you lived in Germany/Austria/Sitzerland for several years, I don't mind (I had a Chinese colleague whose German was on the same level as yours - after nearly two years in Germany. And for a physicist this would even be sort-of acceptable if he didn't need so much with his English - I don't understand why some people want to work in a country when they don't want to learn the language.)

Main_Brain · September 28, 2002, 17:08

Its not German.. its bavarian :=)

MariOne · September 29, 2002, 09:14

:=)
what's this... a walrus smiley???