Wednesday, February 25, 2015

C'est un peu compliqué

Well, this is really interesting--at least it is to a software product manager interested in the user experience. A friend of a friend posted this graphic on Facebook:


The initial word in the top five lines is pronounced “say”. They all sound exactly the same. The sixth sounds like “saw”. Pretty close.

The first three words in the last line translate to “its [sic] not complicated”, which I’m taking as a deliberate joke, using the possessive in French to achieve the incorrect possessive in English, on account of the number of people who swap “it’s” and “its” as though they mean the same thing and the apostrophe is optional.

However, the part that interested me is the final three-word expletive. I typed them into Google Translate, because while I knew the words independently, I wanted to check what they constitute in the collective. Unaccountably, this expression (and others like it) is never taught in college French classes, and (perhaps more unaccountably) I've not encountered it in my travels or work experiences.

Anyway, I typed "putain", and got "whore", so fine. 


As soon as the "d" of "de" went in, "whore" changed to "fucking". (I can say that, can't I? I mean, Google did...)


Google Translate uses predictive text; it recalibrates its response with each letter you enter, which I find most entertaining. 

The progression of "Putain de mer" got me "sea fucking". 


And then "putain de merde" first time round gave me "fucking shit", because I typed in an extra "r".


 And, as I corrected my input, it became "fuck off".


They give you a little icon to correct their translation, but frankly, I was laughing way too much to be able to operate dangerous equipment like a keyboard and mouse.

Il n'y a de rien.


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