Here is a lesson in diplomacy. When sending a missive to a foreign diplomat, it’s best if you don’t use Babel Fish to handle the hassle of translation for you. If you don’t believe me, take this case as an example.

“Helloh bud, enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian,” This was a message sent to a Dutch foreign ministry by a group of Israeli journalists. Beyond the strange allusions to the minister’s mother, one could imagine that the general incoherence of the email raised a lot more questions than it answered.

Tower of Babel

Seeing that their original message had been misconstrued, these wily journalists did the only logical thing and sent a series of additional messages to clarify — including this gem –

“Why we did not heard on mutual visits of main the states of Israel and Holland, this is in the country of this”

and the ever insightful,

“What in your opinion needs to do opposite the awful the Iranian of Israel.”

Needless to say, the Dutch ministry wasn’t too pleased with this little technological tailspin, and is threatening to cancel the fact finding trip that the journalists were preparing for. The journalists themselves, according to the Jerusalem Post are too embarrassed to go anyway.

Web 2.0 Roundup

For a little more fun, lets see what this test sentence looks like after being run through Babel Fish a few times: Lets hope that a valuable lesson has been learned.

• Translated back from German: Hope leaves that a valuable lesson was learned
• Translated back from Japanese: The desire that is permitted the valuable lesson was learned.
• Translated back from Russian: Prevents hope that valuable lesson was learned

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