Showing posts with label universal translator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label universal translator. Show all posts

Saturday, 11 July 2009

Saturday Snippets

What a shame, it’s raining and I can’t mow the lawn, I will have to force myself to sit here and relax instead.

First up:

Universal translators.



The French paper LaTribune has launched a multi-lingual version of its website using automatic translation.

Problem is it doesn’t work very well:

"Ryanair loan to make travel of the passenger’s upright," read a typically bizarre headline on La Tribune's site this week above a story in equally mangled English on the low-cost airline's plans to make people fly standing up.

"The Chinese car in ambush," "Internet Explorer: mistrust!" and "Assets of the continental right in management of the crisis" were some other mysterious headlines the same day on the site.


I used the Google translator and got these results:

“Our good tables to discover” and “The budget deficit widened by French 38 billion in one year”.

Still, Cest la Vie as some people would spell it.



Immaculate Conception?

A Polish mum is suing an Egyptian Hotel after claiming her daughter got pregnant using their mixed swimming pool.

Magdalena Kwiatkowska demanded compensation after her 13-year-old daughter came back from the family holiday expecting a baby.

Tourist authorities in Warsaw confirmed they had received the complaint which states that the girl conceived because of stray sperm in the pool.

"The mother is adamant that her daughter didn't meet any boys while she was there and is determined to go ahead with the case," said one travel industry source.


I think Mum should have a talk about the birds and bees with her offspring.



After the Turtles at JFK.



We now have a drunken badger in Germany that got so drunk on over-ripe cherries it staggered into the middle of a road and refused to budge. A motorist called police near the central town of Goslar to report a dead badger on a road — only for officers to turn up and discover the animal alive and well, but drunk.

Police discovered the nocturnal beast had eaten cherries from a nearby tree which had turned to alcohol and given the badger diarrhoea.

Having failed to scare the animal away, officers eventually chased it from the road with a broom.




Jet propelled boozy badger.




A bit more animal news:


FIRE crews are investigating whether a cat urinating on a laptop sparked a fire that has destroyed most of a home in a Gold Coast gated community.

Police said two teen boys, aged 16 and 18, were home alone for the weekend when the fire broke out about 9am yesterday morning in the Royal Pines Golf Resort at Benowa.

An emergency services spokeswoman said the blaze began in the corner of one of two bedrooms at the back of the two-storey rented house.

It is understood initial investigations traced the fire to a laptop computer.

Police investigations revealed the boys said they had let the pet cat out of the house at 5.30am, but it had somehow made its way back inside and urinated on a laptop in the corner of one of the boys' rooms.

The emergency services spokeswoman said investigations into the incident would continue today, but added the fire was not believed to be suspicious.


Two teenage boys, alone in a house, yeah let’s blame the pussy; mind you I suppose it could have been trying to drown the mouse.




And finally:



We have all brought one; a car that is not, well, fit for purpose, I mentioned a Range Rover a while back and it seems that the trend is catching on.

A BMW owner filled his convertible with lemons and parked it out the front of a Sydney dealership from 5am this morning.

The car caused chaos on the Princes Highway at Sylvania as commuters slowed to a standstill to watch the spectacle.

Bryan Wiseman, of Sylvania, said his luxury purchase was plagued with mechanical and electrical faults from the time he bought it new, two years ago.

"It all started not long after I bought the car when the mats rolled up over the pedals, causing me to have an accident because I rode up over a gutter (to avoid an accident).

"It has broken down in the middle of the night; I had to wait for four hours to get it towed because the thing wouldn't start.

"I've had the window jam: I got stuck on the side of the M5 midway because the roof wouldn't go back on."

Mr Wiseman said BMW had applied bigger strips of Velcro to the mats but refused to fix a dent to the bottom of the car.

"I never made a claim on my insurance in my life and I'm not about to start now," he said.
He parked the vehicle out the front of the dealership, covered in lemon stickers and filled with real lemons, in a bid to end a two-year battle with manager Anthony Rodriguez.
The BMW 335ci was the third car he had purchased from the dealership.

"They said we can't fix it because we don't know what is wrong with it," Mr Wiseman said.

Sylvania BMW manager Mr Rodriguez refused to respond to Mr Wiseman's prank this morning. "Sylvania BMW has no comment to make," a spokeswoman said.



You pays your money…………..


Angus

Angus Dei politico

Angus Dei-NHS-THE OTHER SIDE