ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2015
- Machine translation's a useful tool, don't get me wrong. But if you actually try to use it for regular conversation, it'll fall down really quickly. Why? What makes it so difficult?
Written with GRETCHEN MCCULLOCH: gretchenmcculloch.com - / gretchenamcc
[Update: her book BECAUSE INTERNET is out July 2019! gretchenmcculloch.com/book/ ]
More from Gretchen at ALL THINGS LINGUISTIC: allthingslinguistic.com - / allthingsling
BONUS LINK: How do you translate nonsense words? allthingslinguistic.com/post/6...
Directed by MATT GRAY: mattg.co.uk - / unnamedculprit
And more from me: tomscott.com - / tomscott
Tom Scott only speaking one language somehow surprises me more than it should.
Not actually that surprising considering the UKs bad reputation for not speaking other languages, a reputation which is completely justified as far as I can tell, think I saw an article that said only 30% of uk adults could speak 2 languages vs 80% average across other EU countries.
This is partly because it's not seen as essential because every other country learns english anyway so unless you have a particular interest in a language it doesn't seem that essential and the actual way languages are taught isn't that great for a variety of reasons.
@@emmao6578 I'd be surprised to hear that it was 30% here, I know very few people who can speak more than one language, yet in other European countries, almost everyone speaks 2 or more. Quite sad that we're so monolingual.
@@louisadsc Well since I'm not from here, I suppose it doesn't count
I speak English and Urdu/Hindi/Punjabi
But I'm not from England
Phoenix Mario if you live here i think that counts, but the only people i know who speak more than 1 language either weren’t born here or their parents weren’t (so they grew up bilingual) , i only know 1 person who has learnt a language of their own accord which is sad i think
@@louisadsc Diversity is common, but no one seems to know more than one language/ang langauge apart from their own :/
Ever since Google translate added the feature where you can help correct sentences, it has become like 200% more accurate
This feature is mostly based on stealing the work of human translators published online. Which is questionable
@@ML-of6sz what
@@xiletolat4083 Google offers their own translation tool (also called a CAT tool) online. Their main claim is that it's a free tool that translators can use anywhere (to view a glossary or a translation memory, for example). However, whenever a (human) translator saves their work on that tool, Google uses it to feed their database for Google Translate. It's the good old selling of data
@@xiletolat4083 I understand your confusion. However, the fact that we just accept the fact that they sell our data is quite worrying and questionable as it is, but that's not my point.
Here it is a different process, and more unethical. They have been using the pretence of providing a tool in order to steal translator's intellectual property.
If you don't see the problem, no worries, I don't want to argue. But just so you know that their AI is based on ripping off human translations without the translator's knowledge.
@@ML-of6sz Intellectual property doesnt exist. Your mind has been influenced by so many things, you don't lose anything from your work being shared. I mean there is lost potential for sure, but seperating actual loss from potential loss, is important for happiness I think. What I mean is that everything anyone makes is a result of society, genetics, culture and even luck. It feels just wrong to claim it as my own.
But that's just how I feel.
If you feel different, let me know.
EDIT: typos
I translated "hello, I like you" 50 times from English to Chinese, and I ended up with "fire duck"
Fire Duck sounds like a way of serving Spicy Duck in a Chinese way
Fire duck
greatest pickup line ever if u ask me
Learning chinese right now, in an attempt to say how are you it came out with are you winged horses
@@hatemykids1933 sooooooooo, unicorns?
I am studying to be a Sworn Translator from Spanish into English, and I got tired of hearing people that say that they don't need translators, they have Google Translate for that... "Machines will replace your job someday", they say. Then you have signs welcoming the Pope that say "welcome Potato"
very specific bilingual joke there 😂
Or at the worst end, telling someone you have 21 anuses.
That's because the LatAm word for potato is "Papa", right?
@@maxperrins8878 exactly, but without capital letters. Also a different definite article ("el" Papa vs "la" papa)
@@ryanm8144 XDDDDD
"...Innuendos..."
*one ball turns into pair of balls*
Bravo...
+Aidan Christini It was meant that way. Only the ones in the cultures where these refer to sexual meanings will understand, while the rest won't mind. Pretty smart move there IMO. ;)
Arnab Animesh Das I know :P but that was a pretty good *in-u-endo*
geddit?
+Aidan Christini ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I call it an in-your-end-o.
in slovenian the word for eggs is also a casual word for testacles
"Inuendo"
*second soccer ball comes in*
I thought I was the only one who got the 'balls'-joke. :D
*football
*bola sepak
That one took me a bit to figure out.
@@dappingforever7720 足球*
The concept of making two appointments at the same time is stressing me out
My Punjabi family are polychronic, and my Welsh family are not. The Punjabi half have translated the polychronicity (?) to English and it’s STRESSFUL.
Sounds to me like a certain standard sitcom plot would absolutely not fly in many cultures of the world.
@@jamiel6005 I have a lot of Pakistani friends and they call it "desi time" haha. If an event starts at 7, you can bet that their dad is in the shower at 7:30 still getting ready
@@paulwright567 hahaha so true
I used to live in India when I was young and my parents called it Indian flexitime
A friend of mine once said, "languages are not ciphers." PERFECTLY sums up the issues of translation
YES YES YES
SUMMED IN 4 WORDS
isn't it strange that "after dark" actually means "while it's dark"?
I always thought that's because it's a short way to say "after it gets dark".
Bustr Blu
From what I understand, it refers to manmade light (candles, lightbulbs, etc...) being darkened so people can sleep. Though I’m not sure where I heard this.
After dusk is better
@@GrayDaDolf yup
I figured it's more like "After the brink of dark" so it's after nightfall hits
I work in translation, and recently we've been getting more and more customers who send us machine translated documents which they then want us to correct for a fraction of the price of a translation. Honestly, it's more than a little insulting, considering how much work we put in to get things sounding right in the final language. Especially so when they tell us it's been translated by a person, when anybody with even a vague grasp of the languages in question can tell it really isn't. Henceforth my replies declining the job will include a link to this video. ;)
That's such a good idea, linking them to this hahahaha
That's so bizarre...surely it's actually faster for a competent translator to translate a document from scratch than to go through trying to figure out what a machine translation was trying to get at. It's more than a quick bit of proofreading.
BooksMusicMe17 yup, reading machine translation drive me mad , translating from the original is definitely a lot easier and more accurate, most of the time they got the translation(sorta) right but the meaning is wrong
From Korean and back again:
I work on translations, and more and more customers are sending machine translation documents in recent years. Then I want to modify some of the price of the translation. To be honest, it is more than a little insulting when we consider how much effort we have made to sound things in our final language. Especially when people say that they have translated, when a person who understands the language of the problem can not actually speak. My answer to your rejection in the future will include a link to this video. ;)
Carnophobe Translation work is so underrated and put down a lot. My boss ask me to translate a meeting and i said no in a not so nice way. I work in production!
3:23
Fun fact in South Africa if you say "I'm coming now" it means they're gonna do it immediately
But if they say "Im coming now now" it means they're gonna come in a short while
Ja Nee, Eish😂
confirmo
And "I'll do it just now" often accompanied by a dismissive hand wave probably means "I don't actually plan on doing it anytime soon, now leave me alone"
Já já?
I miss and hate this.
That sudden laugh by the engineer over “water sheep” was surprising but I loved that it wasn’t cut 😂
What we don’t get to see is when he clipped him round the ear for messing up a take! 😂
Well, he's the bounciest man on the Internet, after all. 😂
I personally would like to know why a lot of things that are translated from Chinese to English always use obscure Victorian-era phrases virtually unused in the modern language.
Like in a lot of Chinese electronic manuals, I'll often see the word "Alacrity" instead of "Happy" or "Hegemony" instead of "main". Etc.
Always funny to read though, like their epilepsy warnings are always called "the crazy warning".
Larry Bundy Jr probably because of their complex meaning, those words mean more than just a simple notion, but more of a complex one we don't have a modern meaning for, but better reflects on an older forgotten English word.
Because totally unrelated languages will have lots of overlapping concepts that only occasionally mean exactly the same thing, so they have to compromise with something less basic than you'd hear in either language.
These aren't old-fashioned at all. They are very run-of-the-mill academic words with precise meanings. The software doesn't yet distinguish "register," i.e. style and level of formality.
possibly because english speakers didn't regularly come into contact with Chinese speakers until the 1800's
maybe the reason is the materials which were used for “teaching the system”. They might have contained some obsolete expressions.
„Hey Wolfgang, Günther here, the party starts at 6“
roughly translates to „be here at 17:50“ and a missed call at 18:03
Of course Guenther has to be on point, he's bringing the beer
But of course, the missed call at 18.03 would never actually take place because nobody would be late...
And THIS is why translating anime or doing a different language cover or bringing a book from one language to another is an ART form. And I really am thankful for the people who have stepped up to the plate and choose do an amazing job at it. Thank you!
Blind character : "I see"
Then crunchyroll pays their translators nothing'
@@YourFriendlyUmaruFan crunchyroll straight up changes the meaning anyway, not worth watching
Most amazing translation I ever heard about: there's a famous French book written without using the letter E. Someone translated it into English. Needless to say they had to take liberties to make it still not have the letter E.
That's the difference between a translation and a localization. Something that's been localized has been altered to get the intent across within a different culture, where as a translation just replaces the words.
0:11, it is Telugu script from India.
"Why computer translation suck" is the exact translation.
That's wrong translation dude... I'm a telugu guy... there are mistakes in characters ..
@@aboujaynthbusi Na is missing in anuvadhana. I just now realized.
Thanks
The telugu gang is here
@@aboujaynthbusi Well.. That's the point.
And if _my_ mother's doing the driving, we'll be at the party at 5:00, and all help out with the catering.
But it's literally 3 doors down :P
Vincent Nadin three doors away better leave at 4:30 then
@@amyclarke6176 are you kidding me! 1 door down and we'd leave at 2. just to be on the safe side.
You're leaving at 4? I'm offended. I live at the party, so I'll be leaving at 6:00. The year before. The century before.
In work related reunions , in Spain we are punctual . In dates , it' s nice to be not more than 10 or 15 minutes later , in informal or social gatherings of a group of people , nobody expects you to be exactly on time , and it can be even incomfortable for the host if it is a particular house that may be still getting ready , so arriving half an hour later is perfectly ok, and probably the rest of people will be dropping from an hour past the agreed time .
Funny thing is, English used to have a formal/informal you. If you were speaking to someone of equal standing to you or lower, then you would use "thou". If you were speaking to someone above your station, you would use "you".
Same with Swedish, but they removed it during the XX Century. In German and Dutch, there is a formal 'You,' but it is very rarely used. A native English speaker might find this weird, but in Dutch, an informal 'You' is 'Jij,' while a formal you is just the letter 'U.'
not sure about dutch but "Sie" is used pretty commonly in germany. people even ask if it is ok to use the informal "du".
Hungarian briefly had their honorifics stripped out of the language under the Soviet occupation (and it doesn't just apply to pronouns but verb conjugation as well). Now that they are no longer under occupation it has been restored - only for almost 45 years it wasn't used so more than a generation no longer use it automatically. As my text books were pre-WW 2 and my father too, it was something I could almost deal with but at least one of my (professional) language teachers had no idea of the subtleties of use.
Some dialects do retain "thee/"thou", though less so as time goes on.
argella1300 Thou are not a you
As a german I must say : The concept of "polychronic" is repulsive to every cell of my body.
As a reputably easygoing Australian that idea is horrid. But then I'm also primarily English
As a japanese person, it pisses me off to a whole other level.
@@mcfarofinha134 German and japanese.. we understand each other xD
@@RetroGameSpacko hmmmmmmmmmmmm
I forgot to watch the rest of the video cause I was busy being pissed off by polychronic people
Watched an 80‘s Star Wars spin-off some days ago. Being from Germany, I watched it in German. At one point, a guy was talking about a "leichter Säbel", which means light saber in English. But not in light like from the sun but light like the opposite of heavy...
I mean... if the Saber is made of rays of light, it probably isn't too heavy, so... we can give them a pass on this one
"Hydraulic ram" --> "water sheep" LMAO
Oh, ho, that has only come to mean something now
Rip water sheep. Took two years
What happened?
@@louiserocks1 I think Pewdiepie made a video that uses those words?
Either way, Matt Grey's offscreen laughter will never be worse timed.
ok im Calling water sheep hydraulic ram now who's with me
I can't believe PewDiePie killed Hydraulic Ram. 😭
This madlad predicted the future...
Hydraulic ram was like a father to me :(
@@matsko6527 Like the son I never had :'(
@@2002alexandros wait so is matie your not-grandchild
With a hydraulic ram...
Plot twist: the dude laughing at the "water sheep" was actually a time traveller
Matt grey is a time traveller? And a 19 year old?
Matt's mattmobile is his own DeLorian
Tom Scott is Doc
What about Clouds & Sheep tho
how does this make sense or is funny
1:20 Tom's soul: MY ONE TAKE!!!
I was only enhanced though
I love how Tom adds in little details like the message at 3:14 saying to bring a black tie, because said person just likes collecting them.
When you place quick annotations at the bottom they are partially obscured by the scroll bar when you pause the content to read them.
lohphat A bigger problem is the subtitles, though you can move them, thankfully.
Edit: Strike that. In the HTML5 player, you can't move them. :(
lohphat Reduce the zoom on your computer or switch to smallscreen.
Jack Lawrence +lohphat Or use that new transparent player from the experiment section.
...which doesn't work well on mobiles.
Jack Lawrence You're not over 40, are you? :/
As a translator in training: this was 5 years ago, the situation has... progressed
*represses tears*
To expand: while machine translation still struggles with conversation, idiomatic expressions, and various everyday corruptions of language, it has gotten really, really damn good at translating formal text, and technical writing. These are very codified by design, and all modes of machine translation pick up on very quickly. And it so happens that technical translation is one of the last areas of language that a translator can solely live off (unless you're one of the lucky bastards who become the pet translator of a prolific author).
Ironically, literary translation is one of the worst paid sectors, and yet might be the one that endures computer translation the longest.
RIP your future career in 10 years.
@@MrATN800 Really heavily specialized vocabulary is also completely lost on most machines, or at least my attempts at translating french archaeology books into English or German usually end with objects ending up with names that don't make any more sense than the original... Granted those books also usually don't get a professional translation because of cost...
Actually there is an AI...
@@Trekki200 yep, even for fiction it's still iffy. Cultivation terms get mishandled a lot (was reading I'm really a Cultivation Bigshot and most of the terms are wrong)
"Black tie requested. Not for you to wear, His Lordship just likes collecting black ties."
"You need to understand…innuendo."
Enter second football.
Well played, Tom. Well played.
Heh heh.
Balls.
1:16 tom scott predicted pewdiepie's minecraft 4 years in the future
Actually just watched that part and that's exactly what I thought.
@@darkalligraph exactly what i would have responded
Saw that part and instantly went to the comments to find a comment like yours!!
@@techiesithastobetechies.8531 i feel as though everyone has done that now.
xD water sheep
I speak a little Russian and it’s amazing how easy it is to accidentally insult someone by saying the wrong words at the wrong times
Yup-yup! You need to read the room for most of the dialogs. ;)
I thought someone in Japan was having a nervous breakdown when Google translated it into English. I sent that person a screenshot for clarification. It cracked them up because it was way off.
It also took me awhile to figure out that people were typing laughter when they wrote "ja ja ja ja." The letter we identify as having a "juh" sound they identify it as having a "hah" sound. Laughing emoji means laughing in all languages.
Scottish Gaelic (my language) recently appeared on Google Translate. Excited, I played with it for a bit. And was disappointed. The English translations were sketchy, but I figured they're pretty different languages, so I swapped to Gaelic-to-Irish. The two languages are almost identical - it's mostly spelling differences and some vocab choices but not many. I can understand Irish, although I can't speak it aside from a few phrases, but I can fake it convincingly if I do an appalling accent. Anyway, those translations were even worse, but when I looked at them for a bit, I could see where the errors came in - translating literally from Gaelic to English and then to Irish. For example, some where simple, like "ciamar a tha sibh?" ("how are you?", formal), becoming "conas ata tu?" ("how are you?", informal), but another translated "tha gaidhlig agam" ("I speak Gaelic") as "is Gaeilge na hAlban mo" ("Is Gaelic of Scotland my"). This is because "agam" is literally "at me" but is used for possession - "an taigh agam" is "my house", although you can say "mo thaigh" (but it implies an unhealthy attachment to your house). This is why Gaelic-speakers often say, in English, "I have (the) Gaelic". You don't speak a language, you have the skill to do so; you have the language. So Google Translate saw the "agam" and thought "my" - "tha gaidhlig agam" = "is gaelic my". The other problem is that Gaelic has two verbs "to be", one for nouns and pronouns by themselves and one when you have an adjective there. But English prefers just to use "is", the latter, because it looks more like the English translation than "tha/ta". So there's the other error. "Gaeilge na hAlban" is the only correct part, because both languages refer to the other as that language "of Scotland/Ireland". In Gaelic, Irish is "Gaidhlig na h-Eireann" (Gaelic of Ireland), and in Irish, Gaelic is "Gaeilge na hAlban" (Irish of Scotland). It was a simple phrase, which has a word-for-word equivalent from Gaelic to Irish, but because it had been translated through English, it was complete gibberish.
You speak Scottish Gaelic as your native language? Cool.
I'm hoping to learn gàidhlig, so your comment has helped me immensely to not use google translate to check my writing! Thank you!
Sorry for my ignorance, but do they speak Scottish gaelic commonly in Scotland? And do they speak Irish commonly in Ireland? I was under the impression that the languages were rarely used.
It is very rare in most of Scotland. Areas traditionally inhabited by the Scots have a smattering of native speakers. It is most common, as far as I know, on the some of the islands off the west coast where it can be spoken as the primary language. It's having a resurgence in areas all around Scotland though, with the opening of Gaelic schools so that kids can benefit from being bilingual.
Breanna May No. Sort of. Maybe. I haven't been to Scotland since I was a toddler, and the 1000-ish-strong Gaelic-speaking community here in Australia make a lot of noise about how it's basically spoken by everyone in Scotland... I talk to enough people in Scotland to know that's not the case and that it's quite difficult to come across another speaker unless you live in, for example, the Western Isles. I know people from Argyll who complain that they never speak it with anyone. I believe about 1% or 1.5% of Scotland speaks the language, and as davidsarahmaccolm said, Gaelic-medium schools are becoming more popular, too. As for Ireland, I think the language is stronger there than in Scotland (a higher percentage) but still not exactly healthy. I think Welsh is doing the best of all the Celtic languages, although Breton has the highest numbers but the lowest governmental support...
You're right there is a culture clash when monochronic and polychronic cultures meet.
This is why British Rail and the Brits don't get along too well...
"Take the train from the airport to London. Train leaves every fifteen minutes" the sign said, and it only took forty minutes for the thing to leave!
;_;
I live in Estonia, and damn, they are right on schedule. If it says that bus comes/leaves at 17:42, then it will. Sure, no-one cancelled traffic jams, so sometimes it can be 1-2 minutes late.
To be honest, I now can't even imagine that somewhere it's not like this and it makes me sad :(
Sounds like the German "deutsche bahn"
@@Yorick257 yea in Germany sometimes they are way pver an hour late or dint arrive at all.
As I read this my train into London Liverpool Street crawled to a stop. What are the chances!
It is only a lie that derives from the ideology of white supremacy
hydraulic ram was like a father to me ..... I loved him like my son 😓😓
GBJ
wait what
@@gobahgaber6909 its a pewdiepie reference
??? I think we all know that
So Ram is your father then....
"water sheep" still makes me laugh every time.
Same
I like word play
you actually pronounce Buenas noches very decently.
Incendere nice pfp, 7/10.
@@therealbobmayo5065 dont sex
I was surprised when I heard it. Buen trabajo, Tom.
Tiene el acento de un hablante de inglés que pone esfuerzo pero no tanto como alguien que está aprendiendo español.
@@francaellerman2276 Su acento fue mejor que mis compañeros de clase de español en mi universidad. Algunos pronuncian la h jajaja
Mate, this video is brilliant!! Genuinely, so well put. Thoroughly impressed.
bruh can you do your best to describe the phrase "Oppan Gangnam Style"? Whenever I google it on the internet it just gives me people's English translations of the song, and I am really interested in concepts of different languages.
Well, it should be " Your Elder Bro's Gangnam Style".This is the closest translation.
@@mrpellagra2730
You are correct, but Tom's point in this video is that the literal translation doesn't always convey the actual meaning.
Troilus Maximus The sentence would just be “I am/have Gangnam style”. Gangnam is the district Psy is from.
ariana, what are YOU doing here?! 😭😭
“Water sheep”
*_hysterical laughter in the background_*
“Spot the engineer!”
And the 19 year old army. (but this video was.made before that was relevant)
The "spot the engineer" bit and the self-dissembling backdrop make this so much better
I teach English and French. When I saw the title, I was like "Oh, that's something I might show my students to keep them from using Google Translate all the time"... still, I ended up learning something new myself. Great!
The "you" thing is something which even human translators have to deal with. Let's take the Phineas and Ferb (...What?) song "Busted" as an example. In it, Vanessa and Candace constantly sing about how they're going to bust "you". The problem is there's a difference in who the "you" is. For Vanessa, it's her dad, and for Candace it's Phineas and Ferb. This is fine in English, but not so for other languages. I know German and Italian, and both of these languages have 4 basic "you" forms each. Vanessa would logically use "Du/Tu", which is used for 1 person to whom one is close (Family/Friends/God), while Candace would logically use "Ihr" (Used in same circumstances as Du except with more than one person) and "Voi" (Used for any plurals, and also as an EXTREMELY formal singular). This is a problem for the translator, who has to deal with these girls singing simultaneously, since for musical purposes they need to be singing the same thing. German picked "Ihr" (Plural), while Italian picked "Tu" (Singular). I'm not sure which one I prefer, honestly.
Technically I suppose what they could have done is translate all the "I" forms into "We" (You're busted in German became "I'll get you", for example), which would have solved this problem by meaning they were both referring to all 3 bustees, but this would create the problem of why they were singing We when they were apart. But then, Phineas and Ferb (Or musicals as a whole) doesn't run on logic.
(Also technically German has "Sie", which is both singular and plural, except it's formal and not the sort of thing you'd use with someone you're trying to bust.)
I love this example lmao. Also they have to get it to rhyme on top of that which must be a nightmare
Same problem with the hindi version of the song, they used 'aap' which Vanessa would use for her father as he's older but doesn't suit Candace as it'd be appropriate to use 'tum' as Phineas and Ferb are younger than her.
(Although I must say they did a excellent job of rhyming and translation)
Also there's no distinct words for bust and caught in Hindi, it's just 'phasoge' so it sounds like way less threatening too
Hank Green's translation of that song is "Bro's got Gangnam style" which seems fairly close.
James Smart That's clever - and it's got the same cadence and roughly similar vowels to "oppa" as well. Still sounds a bit weird in the third person though!
***** James Smart I would disagree with that, as a native Korean speaker. In the context of the song, 오빠 is used more as an affectionate, intended (?) address that is used to refer to oneself to a female (maybe prospective) partner (referring to oneself in the third person is common in Korean, as the pronouns system allows for co-opting of titles and such to refer to first and second person pronouns), and the cultural connotation of 'bro' is certainly catered to a more male audience. I might say 'babe', due to the more romantically oriented yet still familial metaphor that the term invokes, although 오빠 is also less egalitarian and more condescending in my opinion than 'babe'.
It wasn't his translation, it was a nerdfighter's translation of the general idea, that hank rephrased a bit.
22015slee Thank you for expanding. :)
kahux So... if you flipped the genders for "babe" around you'd kinda get there?
That's why I use Google Translate ONLY for individual words or simple phrases. For everything else... Thousands of hours of movies, TV series and videos on TH-cam (Including this channel). This is a great way to learn a new language. In my case, it’s English, so sorry if something written doesn’t make any sense.
I'm two years late, but I felt the need to say that your English is better than many native speakers based on your comment. The punctuation, capitalization and emphasis are all fantastic. It's super cool you learned all that from media!
@@brody3166 Better late then never haha, thank you for kind words :) Problem with learning only through media is that my vocabulary is not as large as I would like it to be, because sometimes I just glitched out of the dialogue trying to remember some simple ass word xD. Or maybe I just have a goldfish memory, can't remember... Where am I?
English: The pronoun from the second person perspective is just “you”, simple as that!
French: Well we are more professional than that, “vous” is for formal occasions or if the subject in question is plural, and we use “tu” when it is singular and informal.
Chinese: Pathetic, there needs to be a definitive difference between formal and informal, instead of it also depending on whether it is plural, “你” is for singular and informal, “你们” is for plural and informal, and “您” is for formal, both singular and plural.
Oh wow 😳
Enter Spanish
Tú
Usted
Vosotros
Ustedes
(Some regions use vos)
Laughs in japanese
あなた
きみ
おまえ
沖悪
お嬢さん
先輩
濃い灰色
etc
Keledran Von Sebottendorff Dont forget that real Japanese rarely uses “you” at all, it’s just inferred 😂
Portuguese
Tu
Você (Ocê, cê)
Vós
Vocês (Ocês, cês)
Plus other pronouns:
We:
Nós
A gente
They:
Eles
Elas
The real issue with translation by any means is that it will only be any good if the interpreter knows what the words and sentences *mean*. And that is akin to the "hard problem of consciousness".
Professional translators don't do a sentence by sentence translation, they listen to a whole chunk of speech, extract what it means to them, and then express it more or less accurately in a differentiate language. And unless I'm way behind on software advancements, the intermediate stage whereby a chunk of speech is held in mind as abstract meaning, is as far off for a machine as it ever was.
chrisofnottingham You're right but it's even worst than that, even an excellent human translator cannot translate perfectly from a language to an other without tons of annotations. He can surely translate roughly the meaning of the sentence by the subtleties of a text, especially in literature cannot be expressed in an another language.
Also, creating an automatic translator that can truly get the meaning of a sentence and translate it at its best is probably the same as creating a strong artificial intelligence.
***** I agree. The one thing we know about computer translation versus a bilingual person, a chess playing computer versus a decent player, or indeed any form of A.I. versus a person knowledgeable in the field, is that the internal processes of A.I. are utterly different to how humans think, and will remain that way until we can code for meaning. Which probably needs us to understand what meaning technically is. It all seems to hover around consciousness to me, and that's a tough one.
The one thing I noticed about professional translators is that lots of them are actually really, really bad at their job. And I never really understood why. I think the only way to be able to do a "perfect" translation, at least when possible, is to have actually lived abroad. There comes a point where books, movies, and TV shows aren't good enough to learn. Plus, English is sometimes a very annoying language to translate because it can lack nuance. The context then becomes very important, and even professional translators often get lazy and go for the easiest or more general meaning.
qwerfa A big problem when translating is the lack of contact with the author, sometimes translators have to guess what the author means even when both live on the same city.
qwerfa When my dance team was in Ukraine, we had two different translators for the two halves of the trip, and that became very clear. One spoke perfectly fine English -- she knew all the conjugations, she didn't mix up the three meanings of "fly", she had an extensive vocabulary. She absolutely could say with accuracy that she knew English. But we'd just had a week with a person who not only knew English, but had learned it at a university in Kansas. Who understood "vegetarian", and Simpsons references, and understood that we expected a 7PM show to start at 7PM. He not only translated the language for us; he translated the culture. It made a huge difference.
Before this video there was an ad talking about machine translation
+Tedious Totoro ikr
+NukeCorruption I have that too!
***** haha
Tedious Totoro awesome pfp 8/10
Video: I'm about to end this sponsor's entire career
4:11
ball
"Innuendos..."
balls
I know what you did there.
2:20 same goes with Korean (and other languages) 안녕하새요= hello. If translated to English, it loses its formality because English has no way of showing formality (within the word) and because 안녕 also means hello, but its informal, it could be translated back into Korean as either one.
Also, to be clear, if you speak Korean /are Korean please correct me! I don't speak much Korean. I know like 10 words/phrases and can read/write Hangul. I most likely messed something up here.
I am a bilingual (English and French) Canadian so I can get around both languages easily and I can spot mistakes in machine translations.
One point I have to mention is that vous is the plural form of tu. So it is used when speaking to a group of people in addition to using it as a formal version of tu.
I also want to mention that in Canada, most product labels must be in French and English. Some translations are very bad. For example, "Polish Sausage" became "Polissez la saucisse" which literally means "polish the sausage" and the translation should be "Saucisse à la polonaise." Another similar example is "North Pole Greetings" that translated to "Salutations des Polonais du Nord" which literally means "greetings from Northern Polish people" and it should be something more like "Salutations du Pôle Nord."
priestpilot when would the phrase north pole greetings ever be used. sorry for the weird questions. it's just that it's one of the strangest phrases I've ever seen.
dinkbink
Not a strange question at all! I realise that you have no context, so I will explain. I saw it in a photo of what looks like a box of Christmas greeting cards.
dinkbink
Or they could have been present tags.
www.traductionsdemerde.fr/single-post/2016/1/6/Le-Polonais-du-sud-lui-par-contre-vous-ignore-superbement
oh, thanks! that's pretty cute, as in the idea of cards with north pole greetings, haha. guess i've really gotta scope out christmas cards the next time. it's really not that big a thing here apart from being a consumerism fest.
I'm a bilingual Canadian as well. I once saw a container of vitamins that said:
English: "Milk from grass-fed cows"
French: "Lait qui mange du gazon" (In english, that means "milk that eats grass")
Germany is more monochronic than America, "we meet at 6 am" means "be there 5:55 or earlier" :D
in spanish "we meet a 6:00 am" is "get there by 6:30 maybe 6:45 and there'll be no problem"
In Ireland I'd say you have 6am-6:15am before they start asking questions about where you are
+gio :v Tienes toda la razón 😂
Yea.. In america its straight forward. If i say see you at 7 people will literally show up on the minute.
Robert Gilmour My family is Irish. No wonder they're always late!
it's kinda wild how much computer translation has improved since this video came out
So now I know if someone tells me “that’s a brave idea” they aren’t actually complimenting my idea
just think of it as the word “bold” instead of brave. “that’s a bold idea” seems a lot meaner than “that’s a brave idea” to me
There was practically a catchphrase from the 1980's/90's UK sitcom "Yes Minister", where the civil servant tells the minster his idea or project is very "courageous"... (which definitely isn't a compliment)
Also if someone in the southern US says "bless your heart" it's probably in response to something stupid you said and they mean "oh it's nice that someone as mentally challenged as you is managing to get by".
4:11
Me: Heh, heh. Balls.
water sheep? hmmm. joergen?
Water sheep was not Joergen!!
W A T E R S H E E P
RIP hydraulic ram
jeb_
Neuroses pog
Don't even talk about Japanese language. They don't literally speak the word "You" much.
Five years later, the intro is much less garbled after the round trip:
Machine translation is very difficult. And to prove it, I will now re-read this introduction after sending it through Google's translator - currently the best in the world - and then back to English.
Which makes sense; there's been a good bit of progress in these last years (in fact it's kind of funny seeing that recent-at-the-time paper)! But cool to see it in such a neat little example. Though ofc none of that invalidates your points about how all those subleties and cultural differences need checking and accounting for.
1:17 WATER SHEEP
time travel confirmed
You know too much
*english.exe has stopped working for miz.*
Wtf.. how?
@@soupricemf1260 pewdiepie
@@elijacobs9811 i know
@@soupricemf1260 comment was edited.
As a french-learner, you have to use vous for plurals, regardless of honorifics.
+NoobCreated yeah but for singular forms you have to pick between 'vous' and 'tu'
+NoobCreated The honorifics is called the T-V distinction, and is layered on top of the plurality system. For thought, the word "you" was originally four words in English. Thee and Thou (singular objective and accusative), and Ye and You (plural objective and accusative). I might have the objective/accusative cases reversed. One case acted as T (formal) and the other V (informal). If I recall correctly, Thee and Thou were used in a derogatory manner and became perjoratives, which killed their use, and eventually there weren't enough nobles to keep Ye alive, so it fell out of use too, and now no one knows is the sentence "you are invited to my party" refers to the person to whom you are speaking, or everyone in the room, and whether they are your friend or an acquaintance; all of which is information that used to be conveyed by your choice of "you word".
+NoobCreated Yes, that is true but vous is still used for the second person singular with honorifics.
+NoobCreated Tu - you= singular, informal second tense // On - We= plural, informal 3rd person tense // Nous - We= plural, formal tense // Vous - you= singular or plural, formal tense
We have this in Chinese too. The equivalent of vous is 您 and the equivalent of tu is 你.
did everyone just gloss over the fact that we have footage of tom saying oppan gangnam style?
I love the tone of your videos.
Perfect mix between sharing knowledge and a touch of humor.
Love it.
Long, long ago I mentioned to a group of friends that "truly universal translators" are impossible a la Star Trek, as in being able to correctly translate a previously unknown and completely alien language. Not without "telepathy" technology, anyway. Sadly, one friend kept insisting, "Well, we will never know what future technology will be capable of doing. Someday, some new tech that we simply can't even imagine today will be able to do it!" That is, of course, untrue... but just try convincing someone like her that it is.
I even tried giving a very basic example. If I invent an entirely new language and say the word "piree", how could any translator realize that means the English word "apple"? Even in basic context, I could say the word and hold up an apple, and no translator (without telepathy) would know if "piree" meant that fruit, fruit in general, the color of the peel, "food", "edible", "round", the act of holding an object for visual inspection, etc.
"No, we just can't imagine that kind of technology right now because it's too far in the future. But someday we'll develop technology that will seem to us today like magic, and can translate every possible language."
(Sigh.)
(And yes, for you Trekkies, this happened after the original airing of the episode "Darmok". Heh.)
stellarfirefly I agree, completely unknown languages would be require telepathy. One possible way around handling more well-known languages would be if you had some kind of advanced AI system that could analyse say, all the internet content in that particular language or dialect (spoken or written) for context.
You'd inevitably still have problems when there is no exact, concise translation but at the very least you could create a system as good or better than human translation and quicker as well.
stellarfirefly Sadly, due mainly to bias/self promotion in "science" and media portrayal in "sci-fi", people see "Technology" as a kind of magic. They think it can and will do anything.
(Quotation marks for words we use in language, that often have ambiguous or misunderstood meanings. ;) )
TechyBen To be fair, the assumption that science/technology will in future be able to achieve what is thought impossible is borne-out by history.
If you were to asking some in 1800 whether Smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases in human history, could be eradicated within 200 years they'd probably say its ridiculous.
Hell, pretty much every aspect of modern life would be inconceivable to those 500 years ago. And its not as if the rate of technological progress has been slowing down (things like the internet, genome sequencing or 3D printing as still relatively new).
I'm not saying that means *everything* is possible and inevitable. But still.
Did this friend of yours also think transporters are possible? Lel
This video showed up with its title translated into Swedish. Some sort of irony I guess.
Leif Burman
Nah, probably some translators manually did it along with captions.
I thought it was only for swedes
The moment you realize Psy's Gangnam Style is nearly a decade old.
As a person attempting to learn Korean, I was waiting for the honorifics to come up *sighs*
I just found your channel, and I'd like to thank you for everything I've watched for now. Part of it is your obvious facination with the subject, and part is just how you talk about it. I'm glad I found you, have subscribed, and will be busy for a long time catching up. Thanks!
1:59 Actually, those two phases mean exactly the same: We Spanish speakers would say "buenas noches" usually at bedtime
This makes me very hopeful, considering I am starting a career as a translator and people keep telling me it will be automated in a couple of years.
From a fellow translator: I feel you 🙂If you make it as a book translator, no fears. Even people who passionately support machine translation admit that machines aren´t replacing book translators any time soon.
(literally a couple of years later)
I typed into google translate “hello my name is seb and I support derby because I live in derby” and then translated it through every language and it came out as “use your nails”
As a Canadian who thinks that eventually machines will be able to translate better than people, the double entendre of the last "that's a brave idea" gave me chills. It really is a brave idea isn't it......
Maybe it would surprise many English speakers to know that English does actually have the same kind of second-person singular pronoun that came to be restricted to familiar/intimate uses only. That pronoun was "thou."
The difference is that "thou" fell out of use and died, replaced by second-person plural/formal "you," whereas French "tu" is alive and well.
The new lack of a plural pronoun has started to be filled, at least in dialects around me, with coinages like "y'all," "you guys," and Pittsburghese "y'ins."
The last bit is stupid, saying you is perfectly OK when you are addressing a group, people clearly just like to make their language more stupid than necessary I guess.
@@Destructocorps ok boomer
@@Destructocorps A lot of phenomena in a language are (or look) stupid. In my language, there are two plural forms of the word "goose". Like, why do we need two?
There are heaps of hard-to-see influences in a language. This need to express "plural you" might be the influence of French or Spanish. Languages are often influenced even by languages that used to be spoken in that particular area but aren´t any more.
It seems like nonsense - this "invisible influence of a language-that-was" - but it´s true. It´s called "substratum interference".
I speak two languages well, and two conversationally, and I love the nuances in language. Languages have so much culture behind them, and it’s so easy to misunderstand a translation or mistranslate. That’s why I want to learn more languages, to be able to communicate with and understand other people from other cultures better.
I really like how you mention monochronic and polychronic culture, that was actually a big part of one of my classes on cross-cultural communication. I studied with people from at least ten different countries and our ideas of time could be so vastly different.
0:10 I speak Telugu and that translation to Telugu is simply Gibberlugu 😂
Excellent talk about machine translation Tom! It opened up my eyes to problems I was completely unaware of.
I find that is one of the coolest parts about learning a new language. it gives you so much insight of how people's minds work :)
Can we have an update of this video? ((:
I translated a Japanese song used in a video some friends and I made, so it could have English subtitles. When I did so, I had tabs of about 4 different sites' lyrical translations, another tab for google translate, and another tab for looking up individual words or grammar where google translate wasn't helping enough. Plus my own mostly-forgotten knowledge of Japanese from taking 4 semesters of it in college 3 years ago. My translations were often different, though still usually a mix, of the different translations I had on the screens in front of me. While often times the translations gave literal meaning, I wanted the subtitles to convey the intent behind the words as well, and make sense to the viewer.
One of my favorite examples of how strange and tricky translation can be is the world of anime, esp when comparing fansubs to professional subs or dubs, where the translation can vary wildly depending on who the expected audience is and their assumed background knowledge about japanese language and culture.
neeneko yeah!!
I used to watch a lot of anime with fansub' subtitles, and the good ones have a lot of extra info about some word or expression. Now, watching netflix, is a more mechanical, formal, traslation. They are not bad at all (with my poor japonese), just lose some cool detail.
Hector Rodrigues There is that difference too, but I was thinking more about word usage and sometimes even syntax. Fansubs were less likely to do localization of specific terms, so keeping raw japanese words like 'sempai' rather than substituting similar english words. There were also differences in ordering of blocks, sometimes keeping the original syntax even when it sounded a bit odd in english, so you ended up with a bit of an english/japanese pidgin which made less sense to people unfamiliar with both languages.
neeneko
(Translator's note: keikaku means plan)
Waiwaiwaiwait. Explain the polychronic thing again.. Like.. there are cultures who say they'll meet you at 7 p.m., arrive at 7:45 and be surprised you're annoyed with them? I don't get it, how are you supposed to know WHEN to meet then?
It means that you're supposed to be there around 7 pm. Usually though it's not accepted if your more than 30/40 min late.
Alessandro Moiin So it's like a gamble, huh? You'll either have to wait for 30 minutes.. or not.
I'm from a monochronic country, living in a polychronic country now. Man, it sucks. People use to cancel meetings 2 hours before them. That's the worst thing, because I prepared all my day around that thing to happen. I don't get how they manage their time in a so messy way.
@Jeair Burboa The problem is you "prepared all my day around that thing". You should be prepared all day around MANY things. This way you do at least some things actually done and exploit the ability to cancel last or go late. You never do last minute cancelling you only get cancelled on. You noticed he said in the video "2 appointments at 2pm no problem". The idea is you book multiple things with little regard to conflicts. At the last hours close to the appointment you see what others have not cancelled. Based on what you have left go to the ones you can on time and the rest you cancel or go late.
Your thinking is still stuck inside your cultural assumptions of time, and it show in your question. The concept of "when" is itself tied to those assumptions, which means that what you're asking isn't even coherent or meaningful. If that doesn't make sense to you, let me try to explain by analogy: imagine that, on learning that the French use metric instead of imperial units, I asked: "how do they measure how many miles they travel in their cars, then?" See the problem?
I love your language videos, they always broaden my horizon. It helps that I speak all the languages you used as examples of course but you often speak about differences in languages that I learned by doing and often have not stopped to think about.
You do a great job of using Korean examples by the way, you explain what is unique about the language more precise and easier to understand than a lot of Korean-Americans that I have watched in the past.
Also do not apologize for your pronounciation, it's clear as day that you put effort into getting them right. I also refuse to believe that you don't speak other languages, you might maybe not consider yourself fluent in your own definition but your French at least sounds to natural to claim you don't speak it.
I dunno, I'd say my Spanish accent is fairly good because I've had Spanish classes in school since kindergarten, but I'd hardly say I can actually speak the language. I almost certainly know more than the average American, but not enough to, like, actually hold a conversation, and I'd most certainly have a very hard time if you just dropped me in a Spanish-speaking country.
I caught on to this “polychromatic” thing when working with a bunch of people from South American countries. I didn’t know there was a term for it, I just noticed that they were horrible at making it anywhere on time and seemed to not understand why that mattered or that they were even “late” when they got there
Its a thing here. :-(
Poly*chronic*. "Polychromatic" would mean they're many different colours. (Which might very well be the case, but it doesn't have anything to do with time.)
Haha ya thanks, that’s what I meant.
You only speak one language? But what about PHP, C++, etc? ;)
+Legend Length Is it weird I read that with Dr. McCoy's voice?
And I always thought he is a linguist.
+Hebl von Heblowitz Genuinely think these should be considered modern day languages, after all - that is what they are, albeit grammatically perfect and don't make sense if a character is out of shape! I speak PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, C# and Unrealscript! :)
+Naturality Computer language is english
Except computer language *isn't* english. You have to learn new words - sometimes you get to keep the pronunciation and spelling, but never the meaning. Likewise the syntax is completely different to english.
The fact that words are re-purposed in programming languages many people find extremely confusing. Unless they're not native English speakers - people who don't speak English natively generally have an easier time learning most programming languages because there's less they have to un-learn :).
Hydraulic Ram = Water sheep
😂😂😂 made my evening!
your buenas noches sounded perfectly fine, no apology required.
It no longer sucks as of 2023
A few examples of Google Translate from Polish to English:
Original: Stoi na stacji lokomotywa
Correct translation: A locomotive stands at a train station
Google: It stands on the locomotive
Original: A jeszcze palacz węgiel w nią sypie
Correct: Yet the stoker is still adding coal
Google: Still the stoker coal in it falling apart
;)
Google translate creates some of the best word salad
Craftist Yes and no. In Polish you can rearrange words in different orders. So "stoi na stacji lokomotywa" means the same as "lokomotywa stoi na stacji" - both translate as "a locomotive stands at a train station". But your translation, which here is wrong, wouldn't be if I wrote the name of that train station instead. For example "on stoi na stacji Warszawa Wschodnia" would mean "he stands at Warsaw East station".
Mateusz Wojtkiewicz oooh, "stoi" is a present tense. I thought it is imperative, as in Russian.
Craftist it think that'd be "stój" in Polish.
Yes! language videos.
also, there is no good translation of the dutch word "gezellig", google translator gives cozy, which i believe is the closest you can get, but not the same.
Huntracony Just out of curiosity~ Does there happen to be a special context or subtle nuance which makes it mean more than the English equivalent?
Huntracony What is the multi-word translation for this word? if there is one?
LeftClickShift yes. i can't really explain it, but if you're interested i'd suggest reading these two pages
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezelligheid
stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2011/09/23/gezelligheid-gezellig/
but even those pages don't fully explain it.
Huntracony Maybe: Gregarious? Sociable? Convivial?
I assume that "gezellig" translates to "gesellig" in German.^^
Corvus Urro en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezelligheid
And that's why i use online dictionarys instead of machine translation. They can actually give you the use in a certain context. jisho is a good example for a japanese -> english dictionary since there are a lot of concepts, that every western language just doesn't have. Particles for example, a suffix to describe the function of a word in a sentence since there is no real sentence structure in japanese. Google translates "は", which is the topic-particle of a sentence and doesn't have a real translation in english, to "is" which is just wrong. In casual sentences the "to be" part, which is at the end of a sentence, is often left out so it looks like, when applying western sentence structure, that "は" means "is". And that is just one example out of so many cases where japanese works in ways that we just don't know from english.
The monochronic/polychronic thing makes so much sense... I grew up in Brazil and live in Canada, and I was often "late" to events much to the annoyance of my Canadian friends...
Spot the engineer! made me laugh so hard. Water sheep
+Preston Halle He was talking about subtle contextual differences so "hydraulic ram" is something that uses hydraulic pressure to pound something, but it could also refer to hydraulic(water) and ram(sheep). Us engineers are often stuck in our conventions, so hearing "hydraulic ram" referred to as "water sheep" contradicted everything I knew about hydraulic rams and made me, the camera man, and im sure plenty of other like minded nerds laugh.
It’s almost certainly referring to Matt Gray.
1:23 I think its pronounced "meet the engineer"
*starts playing banjo*
Love seeing hos old videos in my recommended
Me, a bialingual: hehe, i've seen that one.
People who speak one language: what do you mean, it's brand new.
Honestly a perk of being a non native English speaker who uses the internet like myself is that you are guaranteed to be a bilingual.
@@ahmadtarek7763 not really
@@SpecterNeverSpectator how so?
I'm a quadrilingual
@@ahmadtarek7763 you can know three or more languages
Original (English) : Hello there. My name is Matt, and I come from Maryland to comment on your TH-cam videos to test how bad running some words through Google Translate really is.
Original (Xhosa) : Molo apho. Igama lam Mat, yaye mna ndiza ukusuka Maryland izimvo TH-cam iiVideos yakho ukuvavanya indlela embi kokwenza ezinye amazwi Translations ngokwenene.
Back in English: Hello there. My name is Matt and I am from Maryland comment on your TH-cam videos to assess how bad alternative Translate words really.
I know all that from being a Brazilian English teacher for brazilians.
Most of my students like to think each word in English corresponds literally to a word in portuguese, when I try to teach them they’ve got to figure out the idea the original sentence is trying to bring, and then try to say that idea in our language.
This video is excellent! Thank you for sharing!
4:11 That innuendo joke was so smooth
0:35 “Folks who only speak one language (and I’m embarrassed to say that is a group that includes me, I’m sorry)...”
Me: What?!! 🤯
Not sure what is wrong with that even as a former Brit currently living in the Netherlands for 6 months at this point I do still consider myself monolingual though borderline bilingual. I am working on it but I don't feel I have reached working knowledge of Dutch yet I consider it more of a pidgin as I often find myself resorting to slipping in an English word and hoping the listener can translate it or having to give a convoluted explanation of the concept I intended if that fails. Though the former usually works here in Amsterdam as most people I meat can still understand English better than I am able to express myself in Dutch at this point hell I suspect most 10-year-old children here would still beat me in vocabulary. But I still consider myself to have a borderline working knowledge of Dutch it's been some time since I've felt unable to explain something the long way round with my limited Dutch and mostly only resort to English out of expediency as most Dutch people can translate my pidgin faster than I can explain it from base concepts if that makes any sense.
That said Dutch is probably rather easier in this regard as often when I am lost for the right word and ask something like "What do you call [English word]" the answer is a comprehensible modification not always but probably half of the time, guess that is because around half of English is Romance (Italian/French etc) and half is Germanic (German/Dutch etc) so the germanic parts retain identifiable similarity but not the French/Roman/Greek parts.
water sheep was murdered by a hydraulic ram
That's a racial crime!
But hydraulic ram means water sheep... so that mean water sheep killed himself
A hydraulyc ram has fall into the river in lego city
@@southestst Water sheep is suicidal confirmed
Remember the piston?
That's the hydraulic 'ram' I guess
I love the subtlety of adding in the third meaning for ball. 😍😂
Some Anglophone in Wales used Google to translate for a bilingual sign. The Welsh part ended up saying something like “the translator function is currently down, please try again later.”
Almost correct! I found that info from 2008, and it said in Welsh, "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".