Thursday, January 07, 2016

The wisdom of the crowd

Funny story: Google's translation tools are automated. They scan translations that people do online and use that data to "improve" google's own translation algorithm. So after Ukraine-Russian relations went South, causing an increase of Ukrainians trash-talking Russians online, the Russian to Ukrainian translations started using "Mordor" for "Russia", "occupier" for Russian", and "sad little horse" for "Sergey Lavrov" (the name of the Russian foreign minister). I can only imagine how it translated "Putin."

Yes, I am assuming that whoever reads this post will know what Mordor is, but not who Sergey Lavrov is.