Apparently, even Google is now taking part of the Syrian conspiracy against Lebanon :)
I came upon the most amazing of discoveries today.
Did you know that Google’s German-to-English online translator translates the word “Libanesischer” into “Lebanese”, but translates the sentence “Libanesischer Präsident” into “Syrian President”? Try it yourself.
Since I’m no German expert, I tried translating “Libanesischer Präsident” in other translators but I got a normal “Lebanese President” answer. So the problem is only in Google.
If you must know how I discovered this, I was browsing an article in German about Lebanon which has a link to my blog. So I translated the article into English (click on “read more”) using Google, and I found a link for “Syrian President” right above mine (find the links at the end of the story). I thought “how could this be?” something must be wrong, and the rest is history..
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The beirut spring is a blog that is interested in Lebanese society and its politics. It started in February 2005 after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri
October 15th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
They’ll fix it when we have Nassib Lahoud as our präsident. :)
October 15th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Hmm, Nadim, Perhaps google is just being honest then :)
October 15th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
So, that Google logo you have on top, shows up when you visit http://www.google.com.lb? :)
I guess it would not work with a single Cedar in the middle.
October 15th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Use 2 Cedars instead, it might help heal the division in the country.
October 15th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Bashar said to Rafic Hariri: ‘Lahoud is myself’…
October 15th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Kheireddine,
..And Google took that for face value?
October 15th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
if you dont use capital L for libanese it translates it as lebanese president.
Guess google understands the political situation best ;)
October 15th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
if you dont use capital L for libanesischer it translates it as lebanese president.
Guess google understands the political situation best ;)
October 15th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
For the past nine years…President of Lebanon…Assad family. Currently Bashar. So google has not erred yet!
October 15th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Nice catch Mustapha!
October 15th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
hahaha… Great find Mustapha. I suggested a new definition, and advise all of you to do to the same.
October 16th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
LoL well if you want to understand this better just check out how google translator works, it doesn’t have translators that actually insert definitions and translations, it works on comparing previously translated texts to make a one-on-one relationship between words. the success and efficiency of this system works most of all on languages that have a lot of bilingual texts, the more texts there is the more comparison there is and the more accurate the translation would be. If you use the combination of two languages that have little bilingual sources (such as arabic-german) then any potential false or inaccurate translation could cause serious damage to the data base… it’s all about statistics. If you have for example a few long texts with a prevalence of “Syrian president” and “Lebanese president” in it, then the system might be mislead to identifying “Syrian president” with “Lebanese president”… Since the Lebanese politics are so closely related to the Syrian one and with the grave influence the Syrian president has in the lebanese presidential elections, it’s understandable that these mistakes would occur in the translator.
But you can contact google and fix, just send an email and inform the team of the mistake they will quickly fix it and actually thank you for mentioning it :P.
I know this because a Lebanese gay activist discovered that the arabic translation for homosexual in teh google translator was: شاذ
Which is degrading, so he contacted google team and they explained the system, corrected the mistake and thanked him for his contribution.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Pazuzu,
Thanks for taking your time and explaining this for us. I’ll definitely contact google :)
October 17th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Try Libanesischen Präsidenten
It will give you Lebanese President.
November 21st, 2007 at 6:23 am
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