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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!harpo!eagle!allegra!alice!rabbit!wolit
From: wolit@rabbit.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Humorous Translations
Message-ID: <2264@rabbit.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Dec-83 13:52:42 EST
Article-I.D.: rabbit.2264
Posted: Wed Dec  7 13:52:42 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 07:32:03 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 26

To all those who find foreign proofreaders not quite up to snuff:

How well could you document YOUR product or service in Japanese?

My guess is that you'd be EXTREMELY lucky to come even CLOSE to the
equivalent of "prastic pencil" or whatever.

For that matter, I've seen lots of documentation from native English
speakers that's a lot worse, only not quite as "humorous."

Anyway, since people seem to think they can flame in net.jokes if
they include a joke at the end, here's my ticket:

True story about the state of automatic machine translation programs,
at least a few years old:  They (you know -- "them," whoever "they"
are) wanted to test an algorithm by feeding the computer an English
sentence, having it translate to Russian, and then having it translate
back to English.   Some wise guy threw it a couple of idiomatic
sayings, with interesting results.

"Out of sight, out of mind" came back as "Invisible idiot."

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" was rendered as 
"The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten."

	Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ