This is something, alas, which only my Bengali readers can really enjoy:
I recently read the Google people boasting in their blog that they have been upgrading their super-dooper technology to allow facilities for translation, and Bengali was one of the latest languages which they had taken on board. Seeing that they had sent out an open invitation to try it out, I did, to amuse myself - and I was not disappointed. On typing in 'You are a fool', they instantly translated it into aapni akta gordobh, and when I tried to exercise their 'brains' a little harder by letting them try 'To be, or not to be, that is the question', the gem they served up was theke, hobe ba na hobe, je proshno.
Don't believe me? Try it out yourself at translate.google.com
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11 comments:
Dear Sir,
Thanks a lot for pointing this out. I amused myself thoroughly with this; some of it is too inappropriate to mention here!
However, please do try this. Translate "Sourav Ganguly is Bengal's pride" to Bengali and see what the translater throws up.
Regards,
Joydeep
Hahaha, Joydeep, that was rich. Thanks for the tip.
Sorry for the typo. I meant 'translator', of course.
Thanks,
Joydeep
Funny post!
Add a fullstop and the "gordhob" changes to "murkho!"
I guess it will be sometime before "To be, or not to be..." can be translated by google.
Bengali translation is a relatively new addition. Translation from Japanese to Bengali was even more hilarious! (although grammatically Bengali should be far nearer to Japanese than English).
But some expensive translation softwares do provide good translation and aids translators who have to churn up pages of technical translation everyday to earn a living. Google has a lot of work to do to catch up. Maybe in our lifetimes, literary translation may not be possible with softwares.
On the 'lighter' side, tools like google are great help to language learners and animation freaks. Lots of people learn lots of languages these days trying to get a feel of different languages and cultures. There is nothing wrong in that and I feel it is good, but then most of these people will never be good enough beyond a certain extent in any language. But that is how many people tend to be these days and in my opinion, it seems that perfection in a language is seldom pursued in recent times except by a select few. All said and done, according to me, google translation tool is a good thing that has come about and may provide us many more occasions for some of us hearty laughter in the years to come!
Cheers!
I finally got to messing around a bit with that translator (while the particular 'gordhob' liner had been making me laugh out-loud once I read the post; the other one just left me gaping like an idiot). Wondering what liner I could type up, I tried the translator the other way 'round with a perfect liner, which tickled me when I came across it in an on-line Bengali book that I've been reading and somewhat slowly (but let me not get into my own Bengali skills or lack of the same...).
তবে এই কথা মনে রেখো, দরকার না হলে আমি মিথ্যা কথা বলি না. The translator gave me a stunning, "But remember this, if you do not need to lie, I can not speak."
So I kept it simple.
"I am an idiot" gave me a smart and no-nonsense Aami ekjon gobet.
"A tale told by an idiot", however, gave me Ekti hishab ekjon gadha dwaara bolen.
....The Aapni ekta gordhob which refuses to let me be somber when I'm reminded of it, did not work for me. They don't think "I" am a gordhob.The translator very kindly let me know, Aapni ekta murkho.
...and finally, the one that topped my list: for a simple, "He never lies", The Mighty (Barmy) Translator gave me a solemn and profoundly mystifying: Mithya na tini.
Dear Sir,
Thanks for the link. I had just tried to translate a Bengali phrase to English. Just as I wrote 'আয় বৃষ্টি ঝেঁপে/ ধান দেব মেপে', the translator promptly showed, 'Income rain jhempe/ rice will weigh'. :D
The translator is surely an indicator of technology's capability. Wonder what would come up if we give it poems, essays and stories to translate!
With regards,
Sayantika
They should watch the film 'Mouchak' once...
A child translates 'sister' শাশুড়ী (mother-in-law) in the film!
Please try this:
এদিন আজি কোন ঘরে গো খুলে দিল দ্বার।
The standard of Google's translation varied from language to language. I have tried translating English to some of the Indian languages that I know (and supported by Google) -- Hindi, Bengali, Kannada -- and with friends help -- Tamil, Gujarati. The best translation is done for Hindi; and for the others it's not at all upto the mark, especially with complex sentences. That's because Google uses a technique of statistical modeling of 'fed' data. So obviously the Hindi data 'library' is richer than the other regional languages, and hence the better standard of translation. For readers who are interested follow this link for more details : http://www.geekosystem.com/how-does-google-translate-work/
@Sir: Please forgive me with this long, boring, and serious comment in this particular forum.
No problem, Sunup: all kinds of comments are welcome here, as long as they are relevant and decently worded. And I'm sure that some readers would be interested in following up the link you have provided.
As embarrassing as this is I've got to say 'thank you' to google and a 'thank you' to you Suvro da for putting up this link. I wouldn't have found it on my own, and the barmy translator doesn't do a bad job of translating single words from Bengali to English, and it's useful for one like me who doesn't have a dictionary and doesn't know much of Bengali.
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