Auto-translating sound effects

Filed under: Funny, Languages, Translation
1 Comment

A friend recently posted (to Facebook) a video of an animal eating something, and added the following text as a commentary/description for the video:

MONCH MONCH MONCH

Facebook offered to translate that for me. I accepted the offer. Facebook’s translation read as follows:

Monch monch monch monch monch monch

It then offered to let me rate the translation. After the place where I could give a rating of 1 to 5 stars, it let me choose from among the following options:

  • Never translate Bengali
  • I have a better translation
  • Post was not in Bengali
  • Language settings

I told it that the post was not in Bengali. (In retrospect, I kinda wish I had offered a better translation instead.) Facebook said:

Are you sure this post was not in Bengali?

and asked what language it was really in. After some uncertainty about how to answer that question, I said it was English.

Possibly I should instead have taken a cue from my father, and said it was gibberish.

One Response to “Auto-translating sound effects”

  1. Jed

    Worth noting that Google Translate also assumes that MONCH is Bengali (which, I should add, is quite reasonable, given that that is a transliteration of a Bengali word), but it does better than Facebook in two ways:

    1. It translates MONCH into stage or podium rather than into monch monch.

    2. It says that MONCH MONCH MONCH is English.

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