Online translation websites: A cautionary tale
A British couple who have decided to retire in Bulgaria wrote to The Sofia Echo to complain about what seemed to be the use of foul language on a Bulgarian-language website - but the episode has turned out to be a cautionary tale about the use of online translation websites.
The couple, who do not read or speak Bulgarian, ran some information from a Bulgarian site through Google Translate, trying to provide friends with details about flight information.
Unfortunately, because of the omission of a hyphen in the Bulgarian-language transliteration of the word "check-in" - the term used was Чекин Информация - Google Translate confused the first word with a vulgar Bulgarian expression. The result was a translation that read: "F...ing Information".
Offended, the couple wrote to the owners of the site but, at this writing, have received no reply.
Elsewhere on the same site, "check-in" is rendered as чек-ин - with that vital hyphen - which when fed through Google Translate produces an accurate, and certainly less startling, result.
Google Translate offers users a button by which they can suggest a more accurate translation, and this could be a case for using it.
The tale is a cautionary one, but also proof that in many languages, a hyphen can really matter. As noted in The Sofia Echo Stylebook, for example, there is a difference between a hard-working journalist and a hard working journalist.
Text and photo: sofiaecho.com
(16.02.2012)