koganbot: (Default)
Frank Kogan ([personal profile] koganbot) wrote 2012-09-08 02:01 pm (UTC)

Adventures in Google Translate

And perhaps pop!gasa thinks that "play a little" is idiomatically better translated as "party." But also, it doesn't put a space between "놀줄." When I run their version ("난 좀 놀줄 아는걸") through Google Translate, I get "What I know some noljul." I would assume that the Dline Artmedia spelling (the one from the fan video, with a space: "난 좀 놀 줄 아는 걸") is correct. It generates "What I know how to play a little" in Google Translate. But interestingly, when I run that identical phrase except with (as in the video title) E.via's name first in Romanization and then in parentheses "e.via (이비아) 난 좀 놀 줄 아는 걸" Google Translate gives us "e.via (Via) I know how to play a little something"; if I simply add — as in the video you embedded — a dash after "(이비아)" ("e.via (이비아) - 난 좀 놀 줄 아는걸") we get "(Via) e.via I think I know how to play a little" (makes no difference whether or not there's a space before the final syllable, though my embed and yours differ in this regard: "아는 걸" vs. "아는걸").

These are what I get as results of my experimentation:

난 좀 놀줄 아는걸 = What I know some noljul
난 좀 놀 줄 아는걸 = What I know how to play a little
난 좀 놀 줄 아는 걸 = What I know how to play a little
e.via (이비아) 난 좀 놀 줄 아는 걸 = e.via (Via) I know how to play a little something
난 좀 놀 줄 아는 걸 UCC 동영상 = What I know how to play some UCC Video
e.via (이비아) 난 좀 놀 줄 아는 걸 UCC 동영상 = e.via (vias) that I know how to get to play UCC Video
e.via (이비아) - 난 좀 놀 줄 아는걸 (feat. 이수정 (Lee Su Jung)) = (Via) e.via - something I know how to play a little (feat. Lee, Soo Lee, Su Jung ())
난 좀 놀 줄 아는걸 (feat. 이수정 (Lee Su Jung)) = I know I'd get to play (feat. Lee, Soo Lee, Su Jung ())

For "걸" Google Translate simply gives "I" (but when I go the other way, English to Korean, I get "나는" for "I"). "아는 걸" alone gives us "What he knows," with a comma inserted after "knows."

I'd say Google Translate has a long way to go with Korean. I realize that Norwegian, which you say Google Translate does well, is a lot closer to English than Korean is. Still, I suspect that the Germanic languages (which include English and Norwegian) have gotten more attention from Google Translate than Korean has.

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