24 August 2015. A Changing Hut with an “Interesting” Machine Translation

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Let’s start with the inscriptions on the hut before we get to the machine translation howler…

In the top image, on the right-hand side, we see:

• Лада (Slavic Rodnovery Goddess of Spring season and Love)
• Ладить (get along)
• Ладан (incense)
• Ладья (Rook)
• Сладость (sweetness)
• Ладонь (palm of the hand)
• Услада (delight)
• Владеть (to rule)
• Владимир (Vladimir, a name, “Ruler of the World”… also, “Peaceful Ruler”)

The middle image is an expanded view of the centre:

• Русь просыпается: (Rus awakens)
• Радуга (rainbow)
• Ура (hooray)
• Разум (mind)
• Гора (mountain)
• Урал (Ural Mountains)
• Жара (heat)
• Рассвет (dawn)
• Радость (joy)

The last image is an expanded view of the left-hand side of the hut:

• Род (Slavic Rodnovery Ancestor God)
• родители (parents)
• Родина (Motherland)
• Народ (People, Tribe, Nation)
• Родник (Spring (water, aquifer)
• Огород (vegetable garden)
• Город (city)
• Смородина (Currant)

The original caption for this was:

В деревне, на общественном пляже умелец разрисовал кабинку для переодевания.

Literally, that comes out to:

In a village, on a public beach, a craftsman painted this on a changing hut.

That’s jangly and moves in fits and starts, I modified it to:

A craftsman painted this on a changing hut on a public beach in a village.

After I was done, for utter shits n’ giggles, I ran a “machine translation”… this came up:

In the village, on a public beach, artificer painted by the booth for the cross-dressing.

Gee… is that the “Stonewall Inn Memorial Beach” or what? That’s why you can’t use machine translation for serious work unless you have a handle on the language. “Booth for the cross-dressing”… y’know, that’s jangly enough to pass as “Russlish”… all you Russian-Americans know what I’m talking about.

Language… if you don’t know what you’re doing… ooh-la-la… but ya gotta admit, “Booth for the cross-dressing”… that’s a classic blooper.

BMD

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