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browsing tag: grammar

January 30th 2007. Italian translations on the web aren't even good for my dogs (sort of a rant) >

Italian translations on the web suck big time. It is time someone does something about it. I am already having my occasional moments of disgust for the Italian dubbing of movies and for certain italian translations of books. But that's a hard job anyway, not a science or anything, and the evaluation of it is often subjective so I'll mercifully live it at that.
But when you browse the web and you have the disgrace of using a localized Italian Operating System, it's another story. The excerpts of Italian translation you bump into are revolting. Like certain ugly translations of software, particularly Linux software, but worse: The Internet examples are so disgraceful they cease to be laughable the second time you read them.

One good example is MySpace. Incidentally, I hate MySpace: it is ugly, morbid, exposing and hypocrite (all those phony "friends" that only want to be reciprocally "added" or whatever, ugh). Anyway.
You are driven to myspace occasionally when bloggers you are interested into drives you there for one reason or another-- and there you bump into the "italian version" of it.

myspace1.jpg To begin with, the word "visualizza" is all over the place. Congratulations, because it is the ugliest word on the planet. I don't know who invented it (probably some Microsoft or MacOS translator years ago) anyway there is no reason to use it, when the world "vedi" or "leggi" are perfectly good and meaningful. Aside of the fact that using the imperative form is disturbing and rude. And where are the articles anyway? Italian wants the articles, even if someone thinks it's a redundant habit. "Visualizza amici" is grammatically wrong, the equivalent of saying "usciamo a mangiare pizza?", but "visualizza tutti giovanni: amici" is just total nonsense. No moron could utter that in his real life.

On the web is OK, I guess.

myspace2.jpg ..."Visualizza altro": I hate that thing. It is just not Italian. Ironically if it was, it would mean "view something else": certainly it can't mean "view more" as they suppose. Same happens on other translated interfaces where the horrible "leggi ancora" is used to translate "read more". Funny thing is, "leggi ancora" sounds very much like "still reading?" as in: "still reading? Go outside and get yourself a life!!"

And hybrids? Hybrids of English and Italian language can be nice when they are a product of a rich imagination (like writer Beppe Fenoglio did in his books), not when they are used because of a serious lack of imagination. Blogger:

blogger1.jpg "Iscriviti al Post (Atom)": what is that supposed to mean? What someone who is not aware of the moronic jargon of the web should make of that? I'm wondering, was it so hard to invent some other kind of expression? And, "Post più vecchi"? Please. Wasn't there in the fucking italian vocabulary any reasonable word to replace "post" with? brano, messaggio, considerazione, pensiero, pagina, foglio, scritto are all usable words as far as I know.

Then, onto the background of a blogger blog, settings page ("global impositions" part):

blogger2.jpg "Visualizzare i link Post per email?". What a lazy translator can come up with that? First of all, you can't use that disgusting verb "visualizzare" to translate both "show" and "view", that's just a perversion.
Also, even if the original is a ugly "Show Email Post links", there's always a way to better the world a little. It's a sin to fail the occasion.
And "modalità stesura"? That's just sad. Is that supposed to translate "Compose Mode"? Why? How? "Stesura" means "drawing up" or something and is usually referred to either the act of hanging outside the laundry or the act of flatting the pasta or the act of writing something. A page can be written or can be "drawn up". It has nothing to do with the fact that you have access to an advanced editor to edit the page.

Obviously there are dozens of other examples out there. Now, I know what you're thinking: it's the automatic translators, they're robots, what do you expect? But this is just not true.
They have teams of people, with degrees of experience and my nationality on their passports who are paid to translate those interfaces and throw them at my face when I browse.
I hate them.

Regardless, I guess they think it is better to make up some inexistent, mistaken, sluggish, insulting language instead that just giving the English language to everybody.
Well, guess what: they're wrong. It is better if they just throw the English language at everybody. At least one could imagine another world where his or her original language still lives, decaying but still a good tool --even if one is obviously into a sorry dream.


browsing tag: grammar
 
 

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