18 April 2006

Alcoholic underwear from Sony?



Whilst looking around Gizmodo, I came across a story about new Sony Bravia LCD televisions from Japan. Nice. And they even had a link to the original Japanese press release - translated automatically into English by Google Translate.

I hit the link and end up on some site with numerous references to "Brassiere beer".

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Oh!

When 'Bravia' is re-written in Japanese, it ends up sound like Burraaa-Biaaa (due to the limitations of Japanese pronunciation), which also happens to be the Japanese words for 'Bra' and 'Beer' (borrowed from English, of course).

Now laugh.

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You're not laughing... -_-


Anyway, this is a classic case of why we're still a long way from having reliable automated language translation systems, due to the inability of computer programs to understand the context of which a particular word is used.


Click here for the original Japanese version.

2 comments:

Emily said...

If it's any consolation, I did laugh :D

The Wanderer said...

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if it's no consolation, i didn't.

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