Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Bing -1, Google .5 ......

Again, I clicked on the "see translation" icon from Facebook:

caption reads 'Вождь жжет!' and FB offers a translation service'

Bing offers 'chief žžet!'

This is less than helpful, Facebook/Bing.

Again, to be fair, Google Translate isn't much better. They offered "Chief of burns".

Вождь жжет! is a bit on the slangy side, but it shouldn't be beyond either of them. "Chief" is pretty good for "Вождь" but here it's referring to Kim Jong-un, who's a Вождь or capital-L Leader in the literal sense (like Putin, Stalin, his dad, and Margaret Thatcher all were). "Chief" would be for your boss, I think, not this guy. And жжет is a verb, third person singular of 'to burn'. Google got the root but inexplicably thought it was a noun in the genitive which, no way, and Bing didn't know the word at all. Yes, it's pretty darned irregular (the infinitive is жечь (zhech'), present tense is жгу, жжёшь, жжёт, жгут (zhgu, zhzhyosh', zhzhyot, zhgut) and past is жжег жжгла (zhzhyog, zhzhgla). But Bing really ought to have been provided this paradigm, it's not at all a rare verb.

And what жжет! means is "on fire" in the sense of "rulez!" or "is totally awesome!"

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1 Comments:

At 12:29 PM, April 09, 2014 Anonymous Kathie had this to say...

Our translating profession is still secure for a while longer, I see :-)

 

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