Love in translation: He spoke French. I spoke English. Google to the rescue.

Washington Post ^ | 03/13/2015 | Mac McClelland

[goldstategop]

Mac McClelland, at right, met her husband, Nico Ansel, in Haiti in 2010. Their relationship developed largely through Google Translate. (Leon Alesi for The Washington Post) By Mac McClelland March 13

Mac McClelland is the author of “Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story.”

‘You met, and then?” people say when they ask how my husband, Nico, and I got together.

“And then,” Nico says, somewhat embarrassed: “Google Translate.”

We met in 2010 at a hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I was reporting on the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that year. He, a U.N. peacekeeper from France who spoke practically no English, and I, an American with equal amounts of French, communicated with a lot of pantomime. But once we’d started “talking,” we stuck close by each other, him leading me across the lobby by the hand at one point. We kissed that night.

I woke up early the next morning to an e-mail from him. “Hey Miss!” Nico’s words, suddenly prolific, greeted me. “How are you? For me, it was a magic evening, magic moment, magic woman.”

Google’s translations are not perfect. In that first missive, Nico complimented me heartily on my “hornbeam,” which for some reason the software was giving him as a synonym for “charm.” And he expressed frustration, at times comically, about not being able to shower me with “lovely words” the night before.

[goldstategop]

Google Translate can be hilarious! Language barriers can never get in the way of true love. Somehow the feelings transcend the frustration of getting to know a foreign person.

As I can best put it in a poem:

Je te aime comme les étoiles
vous pouvez être loin
mais dans mes pensées ici
il ya toujours autour de vous
peu importe comment vous êtes loin
Plus vous êtes dans mon coeur
le véritable amour ne connaît pas de limites
au-delà de la langue, mes sentiments
appeler au-delà des mondes
et alors seulement, saurez-vous
la profondeur de l'amour entre nous
qui perdure au-dessus de la chaleur de l'été
et les coups de froid de la glace de l'hiver.

I love you like the stars
you may be far away
but in my thoughts here
there's always you around
no matter how distant you are
nearer you are in my heart
true love knows no bounds
beyond language, my feelings
call out beyond the worlds
and only then will you know
the depth of the love between us
that endures above summer's heat
and the ice cold blasts of winter.

[twister881]

How do you say “cheese-eating surrender monkey” in French?

[garyb]

Google Translate:

Fromage manger surrendere singe

[katana]

This sounds a bit like a remake of the forties comedy I Was a Male War Bride except of course that both Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant in the role of the French officer both spoke impeccable English.

[garyb]

or maybe I had a typo in the translation source.

Google,again:

Fromage manger reddition singe

[baltimorepoet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bir_Hakeim#Analysis The French were outnumbered 10-1...
Rommel himself declared that "nowhere in Africa was I given a stiffer fight".

[javi1082]

She slept with him, after knowing him only a couple of hours, and without being able to communicate???

That is what the French would call a: grand putain

[Albion Wilde]

In the comments at the link, here is this nugget:

John Thomas Ellis 3/15/2015 2:41 PM EDT
Most readers glanced over how Google upended her life and tossed her out of an affordable San Francisco rental. She is not alone. Google, Oracle, Yahoo and Genentech have all leased fleets of privately owned buses and ferries to bring their workers into neighborhoods in droves. They have upended the laws of supply and demand. Most of these neighborhoods were family centric, with mixed ethnicity and all had a large non-profit base. These new delivery services are paid by tax credits from your tax monies, so these companies pay nothing and can keep a worker nose-to-grindstone for up to an 80 hour work week. These companies do not pay local taxes and very little of their proceeds ever touch our state and federal coffers. In the meantime, they are socially reengineering the entire Bay Area using your monies and mine like a fire hose to blast whole neighborhoods east into Sacramento and beyond. I live near where the sustainability movement began. The building is empty and being prepared to become a gallery for the wife of a derivative manager. The new gold rush in San Francisco is based on building the city's population by 300,000 people in two years. To many this goal might not seem wrongheaded, but to do it without building more public transportation and to minimize tax investment in public works promises nightmares for those left holding all this overpriced Bay Area real estate. Meanwhile, small businesses and cafe's are shuttering. 80 hour a week workers are too busy to support local businesses. In a few year these same companies will move most of these jobs to China. The mortgages these tech workers hold will be enforced causing even more pain and loss . . .

In conclusion: Google, "Don't be evil."

[Albion Wilde]

One of the unmentionable parts of this hornbeaming story is that Google now has a complete record of more than a year's worth of their intimate conversations, including about her depression. Since she informed us whether she would schtup a stranger and how strong her convictions are in that regard, I guess she doesn't care.

[TheThirdRuffian]

“How do you say “cheese-eating surrender monkey” in French?”

Je suis Barack Obama.

[Fiji Hill]

Google Translate isn't always accurate. It translated "The cat in the hat" into German as "die Katze im Hut." Although it is a literal translation of the English phrase, it actually means that the cat is inside the hat--like a kitten who crawls into the crown of a fedora--and not that the cat is wearing the hat. The actual title of the Dr. Seuss book in German is Der Kater mit Hut (the tomcat with--or "in"--the hat).

[Fiji Hill]

Fromage-manger capitulation-singe--That's how you say "Mitch McConnell" in French.

[tanknetter]

You know something?

Coffee through the nose as a result of convulsive laughter HURTS.

Thank you for that experience.

[JoeFromSidney]

In a way this story sounded familiar. I met my wife on line. For several months we used AOL chat, spending an hour or so each morning communicating between me in Ohio and her in California. Except that we both spoke English, unlike the gentleman in the tale. We didn't meet in person for several months, until she had to change planes at an airport about a hundred miles from me. We met, had breakfast, and she was on her way again. I can't pinpoint exactly when, but some time during this process, we fell in love. Several months later I went to California, met her family, and proposed. She accepted. It's been a great 14 years since then. I wish the lady and gentleman in the tale an equally happy marriage.