🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are more consolidated messages for the continuing discussion about
localization failures.

Jeff
INSOFT-L List Manager

*========================================================================*
 Jeff Bowyer                         EMail:
 Computing Center		     jbowyer@cis.vutbr.cz
 Technical University of Brno
 Udolni 19, 602 00 BRNO
 Czech Republic
*========================================================================*


Sender: Walter Gillett (walter@MathWorks.COM)

I recommend

  Blunders in International Business
  by David A. Ricks

pub. by Blackwell Publishers (Cambridge, MA, USA and Oxford, UK)
in 1993, ISBN 1-55786-414-4

Includes localization failures and a number of related topics.  Very
entertaining although a bit repetitive.


Sender: Peter Castine (pcastine@mvax.kgw.tu-berlin.de)

Paul Robinson <0005066432@MCIMAIL.COM> wrote:

> An early language translator for English to Russian program
> reportedly transliterated the expression

>      "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,"
> into "The wine is strong, but the meat is rotten."

I've heard this story so often that I'm convinced it *must* be
apocryphal. Can anyone actually find a reliable citation.

(Note, the story about how the term 'bug' originated *does* seem
to be true, so maybe this anecdote can also be validated).

Just wondering.


Sender: Roy Badami <roy@harlequin.co.uk>

  Paul> An early language translator for English to Russian program
  Paul> reportedly transliterated the expression

  Paul>      "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,"
  Paul> into "The wine is strong, but the meat is rotten."

A similar well known (and probably apocryphal) story is the russian
trnalator which translated the english aphorism "Out of sight, out of
mind" as "Invisible lunatic"