Leading French newspaper La Tribune have launched English, Italian, German and Spanish versions of their website. The only downside is that they have used machine translation.
La Tribune in English
While machine translation is great for smaller businesses and hobby sites to help their users get the gist of a site, it is not what you would expect from such a media giant.
Browsing the English version today I came across a few confusing headlines:
“Oil puts end to six consecutive meetings of fall”
“Terminus carries of Auteuil for Fabrice Santoro grateful”
“Tsonga is ready! “OJ-Wilfried very wants to make this turn…”
“The Bank of England leaves its directing rate to its low historical”
See for yourself here and let us know if you find any funny headlines.
Though machine translation is a cheaper option, metaphors employed by headlines that read “The death of Michael Jackson causes a vague planet gear of emotion” are certainly lost on any English speaking person!
Sacre bleu! I’m surprised at this, especially when you think about how annoyed the French get at non-French speaking people. To do this to a well-respected brand is trés dégoûter!
Ridicule – at any (ahem, lowest) cost, it seems, is the mantra for many companies during all things ‘recession’. A great shame!