Although your insular and xenophobic Pedant-General, Lady P-G's exotic provenance notwithstanding, would never claim to be anything other than profoundly monoglot, his command of the written language of Molière and Balzac stretches far enough to see that this is a pretty reasonable stab, particularly for a machine translation.
But can anyone explain to me quite what those nice gentlemen at Google must have been smoking? Their translation copes admirably with the phrase
"other meaningless flim-flam" ("tous autres conneries sans signification")and yet, seems unable to find a suitable translation for
"wistfully"or
"tellingly".Is there no thing such as an adverb in French? I always thought this result was a little suspect.
4 comments:
I've seen "a knotty problem" becoming "un problem difficile" -it's lame, isn't it? Lacks that certain je ne sais quoi.
Dearieme,
Au contraire: the real problem is with the French language in general in that its vocabulary is just too limited.
As you know, this is a little bit of a bete noire for me. Unlike English - with its rich variety and huge armoire of nuance - it just seems to be missing the esprit de corps, the joi de vivre and - which is the real tour de force - the laisser faire attitude to the development of new words and phrases.
Linguistically, it really is a bit of a cul de sac: Look at the way they shamelessly rip off words to make such horrid confections as "le weekend".
Au revoir!
PG
Ah, French-speaking Canada: the first time I went there, I asked the taxi-driver "Combien de francs...oh bugger".
Why does Bob l'Eponge sound like the name of an accountant with delusions of grandeur?
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