Ala, our Polish industrial-strength, tough-as-leather housekeeper, has a few odd habits that really bug us. I know, I know...these are little things and we should be happy we have a housekeeper. And we are, but there are just a few small things...these must be the kinds of problems rich people have.
She rolls and winds up socks until they are the density of neutron star-matter...she puts all the dishes in the wrong place, every time...she threatens to clean my computer screen with some terrible chemical that would melt it...those kinds of things...
...and we can't tell her because she only speaks Polish.
So, there are some options available to us here. We can:
1) Learn Polish. Not likely.
2) Use sign language. Hard to convey certain things like empathy and screens melting.
3) Use a crude, approximate translator like Google. Ahhh...this one shows promise. So I go to Google translator, and type in something like:
"Ala, please don't fold up our socks until they are the denisty of neutron star matter."
Google mulls this over for a few microseconds and spits out:
"Ala, proszę nie zamykaja sie w naszym skarpetki, dopóki nie są denisty of neutron star sprawy."
Yeah...so a few issues here. I have no clue whatsoever how to pronounce words that have letters like "ę" in them. Is that an "e" with a chin? Is it pronounced "Chin-ee"?
Also, I know a few things about computer translations, they often add up the wrong meanings of words until the resultant mess is completely wrong. This sentence might say:
"Ala, your corns are sexy and I would love to douse you in duck broth and shampoo your back" for all I know.
And, what, no translation for "density" or "neutron star"? I guess I can forgive that last one, but I know a few Polish women and they all have at least some density.
I shudder to think how it would translate "Apple Cinema Display".
There are just too many unknowns here. I don't trust this yet. Until we come up with a better idea, we're just going to have to hope for the best and hide our socks.
Note: one of my ever-astute readers pointed out that you can't spell "density" wrong and still get a proper translation. The correctly-spelled word now translates as "gęstość", which makes even less sense to me. At least they DO have a word for it.
3 comments:
I'm not trying to be critical here Dave, even though I'm a stickler for everything word-related and the last mistake I myself made was in 1966, but there's a reason you couldn't find a translation for the word "denisty." There's so such word.
And isn't it a bummer how I just skipped over the whole meaning of your post? It's probably a good thing poor Ala doesn't know English!!!
Thanks for pointing out my fat-fingering, Alisa. I now officially have more posted comments correcting my grammar and spelling than I do on storyline or content :)
Always glad to help!!!
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