No, this isn't a post about our babbler in chief, otherwise known as Daniel. It's about a fun little free website that I use often called Babel Fish. Maybe you've heard of it? You can paste a sentence or block of language and then choose which language you'd like it to translate to.Since we sometimes get e-mails from Su's family in Germany and my German is not so good, it's helpful to me. For the most part it's pretty good, but it definitely has some idiosyncracies.
But my favorite part of this whole exercise is reading the first line of the translation. You see, Su's aunts and cousins usually start their e-mails by writing "Liebe Susanne, Liebe Monica" which pretty much means "Dear Susanne and Monica".
But Babel Fish always translates it to say "If Susanne loves, Monica loves."
It's very cute, and always makes me smile.
But hey, is this what they mean by "conditional love"? ;-) Just kidding.
Oh and if they write "Liebe Susanne, Liebe Monica, Liebe Danny", it comes out "If Susanne loves, dear Monica loves Danny." I love this Babel Fish! -Monica
1 comment:
I used to be the membership vp for our preschool and once I had to send some spanish-speaking parents a letter to tell them that because they hadn't turned in their forms on time that they couldn't attend the school. I wrote a very cordial letter and translated it with Babel Fish. Then, because I was curious, I translated it back.
I don't remember exactly what it said, but among other inappropriate things, the translation included the word "enemies". It was hilarious.
Needless to say, I drafted another letter.
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