Friday, January 14, 2022

Watch how "How are you doing" through Google Translate changes from language to language

So, I took "how are you doing" and translated this into French in Google Translate.

Comment allez vous? is the French response. Since I took two years of French in High school I can tell you a direct translation of this likely would be something like "How are you going?" or not a direct translation might be: "How's it going?"

Then I took  Comment allez vous? to German which goes to:

Wie geht es dir?
But, I don't understand German enough to tell you what direct translation of English would be.
Now accidentally I took this back to French which said, "Comment ca va?
What this means is obviously not: Comment allez vous?
although one could make the argument that 
Comment ca va? is an abbreviated form of: "Comment allez vous?
So, then I took "Wie geht es dir?" in German to Spanish which came out: " ¿Cómo estás?". Then I took "Como Estas"
to Italian which goes to: "Come stai?
Now let's see what happens when we bring this back to English?
"How are you?"
So, it's true it went from "How are you doing? to "How Are you?"
The point of all this is that if you are going to be speaking regarding philosophy, politics or religion, translation between languages loses all it's more subtle meanings along the way. That's why unless you have a direct translation between the original language and the "End result language" you really have no hope of conveying the more interesting and subtle meanings of ANYTHING!

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