Translator's Mishap

Or what we would ordinarily refer to as "translation fail".

The following showed up on my Facebook news feed recently.

It will be filed under "Why I shouldn't trust automatic translators". What we take from it is that automatic translations should be taken with a grain a salt — their use is to be restricted for personal use only in order to get a general idea about a text written in a language we don't understand. Once you share the automatic translation with someone else, attempting to cite it as a source or using it in official business, then you run into problems, as the situation above exemplifies.

The Latin on the Facebook status isn't perfect. Volans ("flying"), for instance, should read volens ("wanting"), a blunder which served to add more fuel to the fire of a Google Translator mistranslation. As any other language, there are words in Latin whose exact meaning depends on the precise context. Asinos is given as "asses" in the translation, which is... correct. In this instance, "ass" (itself from Latin ASINUS) refers to the donkey creature (and, not what is meant by the British form "arse"). Our confused subject simply assumed that someone was being called the equivalent of an "idiot", and concludes with some advice, saying that insults should be handed out in English.

After an explanation and a warning about online translators, she apologizes for her confusion in the end.

Moral of the story, my polyglot friends: feel free to use online automatic translators, but treat the translations as you would an intimate journal — only for your eyes to see.