Have any of you noticed the nifty “robo-translation” feature plugin I installed several weeks ago? I thought it would be fun to give the Global Translator Plugin a whirl. The plugin lets me place an icon with loads of little flags somewhere on my blog; people can click and the page is automatically translated. Sort of.

The blog owner (i.e. I) can select which languages to offer her (i. e. my) blog in. Then users can click to obtain a sort of translated page. Based entirely on preconceived notions of where climate-blog addicts live, I picked a number of European languages, then threw Hindi into the mix.

If you click a language you can actually understand, the results can be sort of humorous. Below, I have posted the translation into French of the first paragraph from yesterday’s post:

J’ai été bummed que je ne peux jamais scoop Roy Spencer sur les anomalies de température UAH. J’ai secoué mon cerveau à essayer de comprendre comment je peux sortir avec une sorte de “première” lecture de la température de mois. J’ai examiné un certain nombre de stratégies:

It’s interesting to learn the idioms “être bummer” and “pouvoir scooper” have penetrated the French language. And such a novel conjugation for an ‘er’ verbs!

The various translations for the first paragraph include:

1. Spanish: “He estado bummed que nunca primicia Roy Spencer “.
2. Italian: “Sono stato bummed che non può mai scoop”.
3. German: “Ich habe bummed, dass ich nie SCOOP”.
4. Russian: “Я был bummed что я никогда не совок Рой Спенсер на грн температуры”

Those of you who want to have fun learning how far the verbs “scoop” and “bummed” have penetrated foreign languages can click the other buttons. 🙂

(If you are the first to click, this warming will appear briefly, “This page has not been translated yet. The translation process could take a while: in the meantime a semi-automatic translation will be provided in a few seconds.”)

If any native speakers are disturbed by odd translations, there is a multi-click method permitting them to suggest a better translation. Find “Back to Translate” link at the top of a translated page; click. Then enter the mistranslated text. Google will translate it again, and also provide a link to “Contribute a better translation”. Click that. Then provide the improved translation.

With some luck, Google will eventually know how to translate all slang and idiom, including words like “shank-a-potamus”. Better yet, the Google translator will help us discover the correct realclimatespeak to ‘common english venacular’ translation of “a few years” particularly when surrounded by text that specifically mentions the year 2007 twice, including an introduction that emphasizes that the new report is “the most important update of climate science since the 2007 IPCC report” and, moreover, is posted on a group blog established in 2004.

Oddly, when I first read RC’s introduction, I noticed the 2007 AR4 was specifically mentioned by the RC authors, so I assumed “Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago” would use

1. “are” to mean “are (present tense) currently observed to be progressing” rather than “can be shown to have progressing more rapidly than the 2001 TAR model hindcasts post-dicted for historic periods predating the TAR” (but oops. Our writing now suggests we did’t bother to compare this aspect of the hind cast to the existing measurements back when we wrote the TAR and disseminated our projections. )
2. “faster than was expected a few years ago”, to mean either a) faster than was actually predicted/projected in the 2007 AR4, and/or b) faster than what was readily available data disclosed in the 2007 AR4.

However, it appears the phrase means something . . . else. If anyone can suggest the correct translation for the google “realclimatespeak” to “common English venacular” robo-translator, please do.