Sunday, April 12, 2009

Wikifish by Babelpedia

You know how sometimes when you're really tired, you'll be reading something on Wikipedia and you have to look twice, and you think, Wait, that's so badly worded that it must be my tired eyes playing tricks? But then you look again and it's not that - it really is that badly worded. Then you realise that it's because this is part of an article about a place mainly populated by people who don't speak English at all, but do speak Spanish very well, so they've written the article in Spanish, then used some kind of online translator to turn it into ... something. Thus:
  • Park of May In May
of 1910 when commemorating itself the centenary of the rebolución of May, is inagurado is green space, from comes its name there. Be lung of the city is in the intersection of the streets Reconciled Liberating General San Martín and the Heras, has infantile games, an artificial lake with an island, fish and aquatic birds, a velodrome, kartódromo and sentenares of statues between the outstanding are the one of General San Martín, the one of Federico Cantoni (governor of the province) and the one of the monument to the sport..
This is from the Wikipedia article for San Juan, Argentina, and the whole piece isn't like this - it's just parts of the Urban Aspect section.

I'm quite fascinated by the infantile games in particular. Poking fun at one another, kicking sand in faces, smacking and pinching, showing off, that sort of thing. Usually when I'm Wiki'ing I'll fix little errors that I find, which is, of course, what we're all supposed to do. But in this case I seriously don't know where to start.

(Oh, and please, before anyone gets all snooty, I'm not being Anglocentric and making fun of Spanish-speaking people, OK? I do respect their language, cultures, dialects, customs and regional idiosyncrasies in all their rich diversity. This just stuck me as a little amusing. Sheesh!)

1 comment:

Samantha Hughes said...

Oh that is sublime poetry! I'll join you in the childish games - tag you're it...