{"id":408918,"date":"2010-03-09T11:30:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T16:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2170"},"modified":"2010-03-09T11:30:11","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T16:30:11","slug":"the-sliced-raw-fish-shoes-it-wishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/408918","title":{"rendered":"The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The crash-blossom-y headline that Geoff Pullum just posted about, “Google’s Computer Might Betters Translation Tool<\/a>,” has been changed in the online edition of The New York Times<\/em> to something more sensible: “Google\u2019s Computing Power Refines Translation Tool<\/a>.” The headline in the print edition, says LexisNexis, is “Google Can Now Say No to ‘Raw Fish Shoes,’ in 52 Languages.” This is a typical example of the gap between oblique print headlines and their more straightforward online equivalents designed with search engines in mind. (See the April 2006 Times<\/em> article, “This Boring Headline Is Written for Google<\/a>.”)<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>But enough about the headline: the <\/a>article itself<\/a> is worth reading (and has a quote from Language Log’s own Philip Resnik<\/a>). The headline in the print edition refers to the article’s anecdotal lead:<\/p>\n

\n

In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message through an automatic translation service that the company had licensed.<\/p>\n

The message said Google was a favorite search engine, but the result read: \u201cThe sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Brin said Google ought to be able to do better. Six years later, its free Google Translate service handles 52 languages, more than any similar system, and people use it hundreds of millions of times a week to translate Web pages and other text.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know what sort of source text in Korean might have generated the failed translation Brin mentions, but the “sliced raw fish shoes” problem has apparently been a longstanding issue for Korean-English MT. In 2007 the blogger Karl Heinz Kremer<\/a> described running a Korean-language message from Microsoft through Babelfish (apologies if the Korean version looks like mojibake<\/a><\/em> in your browser):<\/p>\n

\n

\ubcf8 \uba54\uc77c\uc740 2007\ub144 12\uc6d4 20\uc77c \uae30\uc900\uc73c\ub85c \ub2f9\uc0ac\uc758 \uba54\uc77c\uc744 \uc218\uc2e0 \ub3d9\uc758\ud558\uc2e0 \uace0\uac1d \ubd84\ub4e4\uc5d0\uac8c\ub9cc \ubc1c\uc1a1\ub418\ub294 \uba54\uc77c\uc785\ub2c8\ub2e4.\uba54\uc77c \uc218\uc2e0\uc744 \uc6d0\uce58 \uc54a\uc73c\uc2dc\uba74 \uc81c\ubaa9\ub780\uc5d0 “UNSUBSCRIBE”\ub77c\uace0 \uc801\uc73c\uc2e0 \ud6c4 \ud68c\uc2e0\ud558\uc5ec \uc8fc\uc2ed\uc2dc\uc624.\ub610\ud55c \ud504\ub85c\ud544 \uc13c\ud130\ub97c \ud1b5\ud558\uc5ec \ub274\uc2a4\ub808\ud130\uc5d0 \ub300\ud55c \ubaa8\ub4e0 \uad6c\ub3c5 \uad00\ub9ac\ub97c \ud558\uc2e4 \uc218 \uc788\uc2b5\ub2c8\ub2e4.\uc8fc\uc18c: \uc11c\uc6b8\ud2b9\ubcc4\uc2dc \uac15\ub0a8\uad6c \ub300\uce58\ub3d9 892\ubc88\uc9c0 \ud3ec\uc2a4\ucf54\uc13c\ud130 \uc11c\uad00 5\uce35 (\uc6b0\ud3b8\ubc88\ud638 135-777)<\/p>\n

Here is the translation: \u201cThe mail which it sees in 2007 December 20th standard the mail of theheadquarters of a party the reception is the mail which is sent out atonly the customer minutes which agree. Unit is not and subject is \u201casUNSUBSCRIBE\u201d after writing, the sliced raw fish shoes to do the mailreception. Also pro there is a possibility of doing all subscriptioncivil official the news letter the center where it will bloom leadsand against. Address: Seoul Kangnam Ku confrontation eastern 892 housenumber guns su from nose center tube 5 layer (postal code 135-777)\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another blogger<\/a> wrote of getting the Babelfish result, “The hour is busy with relationship of pressure one but shear mail sliced raw fish shoes entrusting under confirming it gives rightly. Thanks it gives in cooperation.” And an automatically translated love letter<\/a> on Yahoo! Answers includes the ineffable “…like the like that thing the branch doing against the route which is not the after sliced raw fish it does not want.”<\/p>\n

Anyone proficient in Korean want to get to the bottom of the sashimi-shoe conundrum?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The crash-blossom-y headline that Geoff Pullum just posted about, “Google’s Computer Might Betters Translation Tool,” has been changed in the online edition of The New York Times to something more sensible: “Google\u2019s Computing Power Refines Translation Tool.” The headline in the print edition, says LexisNexis, is “Google Can Now Say No to ‘Raw Fish Shoes,’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}