Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Cool Messenger

At school we have a program called Cool Messenger that works as an inter-office instant messaging system. It is very possible that this program is also used in the US but I have personally never encountered it before.  From what I can tell it works fairly well but I also don't IM my coworkers because I don't speak the same language as them.  So basically I know nothing.

We get roughly 2-4 messages on this thing per day and no one ever tells me what they say.  So I have taken it upon myself to translate these messages in order to try to understand what is going on at school and whether or not it will affect me.  In order to accomplish this task I use Google Translate.

What is Google Translate?  It is a webpage (translate.google.com) where you can enter words in one language and it will be translated to another.  It's very easy to use and has over 40 languages to select from so it's very convenient in that sense.

The only problem is that it's terrible.

Below I have copied and pasted a few samples of translations I received from Google Translate.  See if you can make sense of any of these.

Message One
Hello ~ ~
Eight chair in English-only classrooms
Suddenly disappeared ..
If any teacher you chair
Please let me know ~ ~

Message Two
^ ^
. Executive offices Choi, Jong - Kyun ~
Next month (October 1) calibration beloved characters were to leave. Information only if you totally unexpected parting, I thought you were supposed to like issued as fully covered, but more
Wants to be, nor could also be issued Once you're pretty good at that you have to move the plight tears faded leaves.
Movers to pack and bordering on weekends, holidays, wearing business also need to clean up, and I owe you, but heh greet so cool greeting. Do than chastise message to generously forgive me ~ ~

Meanwhile, goes so grateful and happy memories in their hands.
Love you ~. (Not really ...)

Message Three
Reunions from - will tell.

There are two events next Friday.

1 Administrative Sir farewell
2 Staff athletic

 Administrative His sudden realignment will have a farewell party on Friday, Sir sludge employees to attend without missing one minute hope you share your seokbyeol tablets.

Time and place of the future We will send you a message back.

I have no idea what any of those mean or were about.  And the worst part is that any days in the future they were referencing have now come and gone and I still don't know what they mean!  But I continue to use Google Translate.  Partly for the convenience, partly for the challenge of deciphering what the message really means, but mostly for the hilarity of these translations.  You just can't make this stuff up.




1 comment:

  1. Taleen,
    How about this? Take an English phrase and translate it into Korean, then take that and translate it back into English? Even if you don't learn anything, it might me entertaining.
    Love,
    David

    ReplyDelete

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