Thursday, June 6, 2013

I’m “Learning” A New Language

A 44 yr. old correspondence is living up again. And I find myself writing letters in the Finnish language. You guessed it, we have taken up our old friendship from before before 1969. Trouble is, she has all but forgotten how to write German and one can’t really blame her. If one never uses a learned language it falls in some narrow crack in the brain and can’t be hauled up again. At least that’s how it works with me.  But do I really write Finnish?  Well, I’m cheating a little. I’m actually writing the letter in German, then move the whole story into the Google translation and voila…. out comes it in Finnish. Let’s see, if we do this with the above text it’ll look like this:

44 yr. vanha kirjeenvaihto elää uudelleen. Ja pidän itseäni kirjoittamassa kirjeitä Suomen kielen. Arvasit oikein, olemme ottaneet vanhan ystävyyden ennen ennen vuotta 1969. Trouble on hän on kaikki, mutta unohtanut miten kirjoittaa Saksan ja ei voi oikeastaan ​​syyttää häntä. Jos joku ei ole koskaan käyttää opittua kieltä se kuuluu joissakin kapea halkeama aivot ja ei voi raahattiin uudelleen. Ainakin se toimii minulle. Mutta voin todella kirjoittaa suomea? No, olen pettää vähän. hieman. Olen todella kirjoittaa kirjeen saksaksi, siirrä koko tarinan Google käännös ja voila .... ulos tulee se suomeksi. Katsotaanpa, jos voimme tehdä tämän tekstin yläpuolella se tulee näyttää tältä:

Looks funny doesn’t it?

I know that these translation monsters aren’t doing proper grammatical work. However, it is readable if you have a generous mindset. :-) But isn’t it remarkable that there is no translation for “TROUBLE”?

Anyway, we had another sunny day out here and I could enjoy a road trip to Eastport, ME. We can see Eastport from our house (no it’s not RUSSIA..aka Sara Palin:-))  and it is only a good mile across the water, but it’s America and we can’t just take a boat and ride across. We have to go through border stations and that’s why I had to drive 50 miles through Maine. Was visiting a couple of really nice heritage-style B+Bs dropping off our brochures, charming a couple of ladies along the way. Hey, I had fun today. Got good coffee and home-baked muffins. Can’t really ask for more. Can I?






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4 comments:

  1. RickJune 7, 2013 at 1:02 AM

    Google translate on aika vaikuttava työkalu. Mukava kuulla, sait kahvia ja muffinsseja matkasi tänään.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJune 7, 2013 at 4:04 AM

    LOL on corresponding in Finnish...

    Some years ago I worked for a company that translated technical manuals. With customers like J.I. Case we'd be given a manual in English and be expected to duplicate it in 10 other languages including Finnish. The problem being that Finnish seems not to like to HYPHENATE words. Our task was to make each edition look as much like the others as possible -- including page breaks and picture locations on the page. Finnish was always our hardest translation project.

    My condolences. :-)

    Cheers,
    Peter
    A retired Photographer looks at life
    Life Unscripted

    ReplyDelete
  3. YankeeflyerJune 7, 2013 at 7:13 AM

    Love that bakery on main St in Eastport! Hope to have me a coffee there soon myself.Maybe get over there to Campebello and take your tour too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. our awesome travelsJune 7, 2013 at 8:08 AM

    Google translate sure does come in pretty handy.
    A very useful tool.

    ReplyDelete

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