Norwegians get ICBE Fever
If you go to the main ICBE page, you’ll notice we offer up the site in a series of languages, amongst these Norwegian. So I was quite delighted last week when we started receiving a fair amount of traffic originating from sites in Norway, and some letters from Norwegian readers as well. Of course these readers were quick to remark upon just how crappy the English->Norwegian translations really were. I think Erik E. put it best:
“And while I’m writing to you: Your Norwegian translations are really, really bad! As a matter of fact, they suck! I guess you have used an automated translation? Norwegian differ a lot from English, so automated translating – that means translating word by word – doesn’t make sense. It is possible to understand parts of the text, but it is mostly crap! Just wanted you to know. As a matter of fact, I was made aware of your site through a Norwegian Computer Humour section that actually mocks the translation!”
Mocking the ICBE?!?! How dare they! I managed to track down the referring/offending webpage, but naturally I can’t read a word of it. Check out some of these tidbits when I translate that page using a free server:
“Nettsiden at International Cent for Bathroom Etiquette, as in itself am amusing, has either employed stupfulle compilers, or additional sansynlig…”
“We cities us in bath”
WTF? Man, I really, really hope the English->Norwegian translations did a little bit better than that! Any publicity is good publicity right?
3 comments
hee hee… well, ICBE needs some help translating, obviously. Did ICBE ever fix its Portuguese translations?
I believe our “International Liaison” is still working on things.
I for one, am not holding my breath! He’s even half-asleep for his staff photo…
http://www.icbe.org/pages/staff.shtml
“Awful”? On the contrary, this was TOO FUNNY! I and my kids read, laughed, wiped tears off our faces, read more andf laughed more. Hillarious!
My kids read English fairly well so we were able to interpret the “Norwegian translation”, although a it hard at times. But, if hard, the more fun…
Oh and by the way: Thanks for the embedded warning. I won’t ever, ever dare try those translation engines.
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