How long until all the fundy blogs are aflame over Obama?

[GolightlyGrrl]

Because it needs to be said, Bristol.

This is a father:

This is a baby daddy:

What did you provide for your child?

[pomology]

Yup, internet translators are worthless! Makes me laugh when I see texts translated into French with Google Translate, which makes it barely readable. Good thing for the people around me that are professionnal translators or they'd be out of work!

Internet translators are not useless! They are spectacular for those of us too lazy to use dictionaries. They are also useful in certain other ways, too, but only if you actually have a significant amount of knowledge about the language you are translating to. For example, I can find out if the passato prossimo of any given verb in Italian takes essere or avere by using Google Translate. But in order to do that, I need to know how Italian works in general.

But for putting a sentence in and expecting to get a grammatically correct sentence out? Not so much.

[Austin]

Okay, this is only tangentially relevant, but can someone explain to me what point Fluffy-Boo was trying to make here? Why on earth would it be inappropriate to respond in English to an anti-American (or even, as is the case, a sarcastic non-anti-American)? This would only (sort of) make sense to me if English was originally and exclusively the language of the USA, but then, maybe I'm missing something. Possibly a lobotomy.

I thought it seemed awfully strange, as well, and couldn't even begin to guess what he/she was trying to. . .uh. . . communicate :?

[lilwriter85]

Because it needs to be said, Bristol.

This is a father:

This is a baby daddy:

What did you provide for your child?

Love this.

But I do feel a bit sorry for Levi, his claims that the Palins try to keep him away from Tripp seem believable.

Bristol here are two men who love each other and are probably doing their best to raise their children. 20 years from now those kids will be better off than your son.

[GolightlyGrrl]

Love this.

But I do feel a bit sorry for Levi, his claims that the Palins try to keep him away from Tripp seem believable.

Bristol here are two men who love each other and are probably doing their best to raise their children. 20 years from now those kids will be better off than your son.

Here is a couple more:

[Zoom]

We have a married gay celebrity couple here in Sweden. They have two kids. I couldn't find any pictures of them with their children. Why? Because they (unlike many of the fundies we snark) believe that their children have the right to their privacy. That is great parenting.

I do have to say though that the pictures above make my heart melt. They are adorable. Especially the Peter Pan one :)

[JaChelle Sugar]

Its long over due for a President to publically agree with marriage equality!

[debrand]

I thought it seemed awfully strange, as well, and couldn't even begin to guess what he/she was trying to. . .uh. . . communicate :?

My guess is that Fluffy boo is desperate to prove his or her intelligence to us. All he proved was that he (or maybe she) doesn't understand sarcasm.

[The Archivist]

My guess is that Fluffy boo is desperate to prove his or her intelligence to us. All he proved was that he (or maybe she) doesn't understand sarcasm.

I agree. From the whole conversation, I got the impression of a young, somewhat nerdy, definitely arrogant, and despite much protesting, probably MALE, troll who was interested in impressing and intimidating a bunch of uppity women on the internet.

If not male, then a woman with the personality of Zsu Zsu or Anna Matrix. There was a particular kind of arrogance (and a bunch of non sequitur topic-hopping in an attempt to impress with its broad range of "knowledge") that struck me as being instilled by male privilege, although a female patriarchical True Believer might come across with a similar tone.

[fluttershies]

Also, 'les invertis' is surely not the correct modern French term for queer folks? The idea of the 'inverted' sexuality is no longer a valid one.

[Sola]

Because it needs to be said, Bristol.

This is a father:

This is a baby daddy:

What did you provide for your child?

Quoting because it needs to be quoted.

[desertvixen]

Really, Bristol? You're going to lecture people on the importance of having a mommy and a daddy?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

My students keep trying to use google translate. It is always very obvious when they have done so.

OMG totally! I teach Russian, and I've even written on my undergrads' papers: "Do not use translation software, I can tell when you do it!" A particularly funny example was one student who had to write some sentences about a war movie we watched, and because he used Google Translate, he did not realize that while in English, the word "arms" can refer to body parts OR weapons, this is NOT the case in Russian. :lol: I do often use it to check translations of the languages I'm learning to read; if you already know the structure of the language you are translating, it can be a helpful tool.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

OMG totally! I teach Russian, and I've even written on my undergrads' papers: "Do not use translation software, I can tell when you do it!" A particularly funny example was one student who had to write some sentences about a war movie we watched, and because he used Google Translate, he did not realize that while in English, the word "arms" can refer to body parts OR weapons, this is NOT the case in Russian. :lol: I do often use it to check translations of the languages I'm learning to read; if you already know the structure of the language you are translating, it can be a helpful tool.

Oh good GRIEF. There is not enough facepalm in the world...!

The farther apart two languages are, the less possible it is to even begin to think you can translate word for word. And yet people persist in doing it. I see some hilarious results done as tattoos quite frequently, which makes me cringe. I can tell exactly where they went wrong...

I do agree that using Google translate to put a foreign language into a language you already KNOW is quite useful - if the result is successful, you will get a badly written snippet of language with terrible grammar in the language you know, but you will be able to decode it. I put that French sample into google first off (well, after doing a general google search, because I thought it might be a copypasta quote from some well-known source maybe) and was able to understand the result, because I speak English. I would never use google to generate French (as a non-French-speaker), unless I had no other options (but if I did, surely some regular French speaker might be able to decode the result, if I was asking about something like train ticket prices, so it's useful).

I'm sort of impressed at how well it does with Yiddish photo captions, actually :D As long as it gets it into at least half-assed English or Japanese, I'm good to fix the rest...

Someone told me once that any human utterances are translatable. Individual words are not. Everything depends on context, and I will say as a bilingual person who has done translation from time to time, the only way to do it is to read the original, understand that, then say the same thing with the same nuance (or as close as possible) in the target language. There is no word to word, at least not for Japanese and English.