Saying Cheese in Any Language. . .

June 5, 2008

. . . isn’t that easy, as it turns out.

I look at a LOT of different websites, and sites in a LOT of different languages. There are tools out there that try to translate a site’s language from say French to English. The image above is from a French website that has been put through Google’s French to English translation tool.

Now, language translation tools are very literal. They look at the text and replace the French words with English ones. The results are not always the most accurate, but they can be comical. I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t like a nice breast cheese with a glass of Napa Valley chardonnay. I’m telling you, you haven’t lived.

There is no online language translation tools that can take woman-speak and translate it into man-language.

Which is a good reminder of just how important effective communication is. Conveying ideas, thoughts, fears, feelings is a skill that no computer has matched yet.

So make sure you can, otherwise you might end up eating a rather large wedge of smelly fromage.