Lost in Translation

There are numerous thoughts and feelings that can be expressed only in the native tongue. Manual translation from one language to another can be a tedious process. And even with great care, the translated text may not convey the same feelings that the original text does.

If manual translation is prone to such inconsistencies, what about the automated translations? I think everyone agrees that this is one of the most error prone activities. One problem is the inability to express a language as a finite grammar. The only language that I know which can be expressed like that is Sanskrit.

What’s the point of this post? Well, it’s a message that one of my colleague got on his IM. We interact with some persons in a certain East European country as part of our office work. These interactions are very often, serious technical discussions. While one of them can still chat with us without using a translator, not all are that lucky. One certain person there uses a 'pocket translator'.

This is the message that my colleague got from him on his IM in middle of a serious discussion.

-> are you there?
-> I must replace my ass to another place. I will entor to internet from home in 45-60 min

His smart pocket translator has conveyed the message, though with wrong choice of words. :)


P.S. I have just started using telugu font on my computer. I have an idea to create a telugu blog, but given that these days I rarely blog, I might drop the idea.