Come The Felicity The Door
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From Charles Belov:
Sending along a photo from a videodisc cover I encountered in a little free library.
The Chinese title 幸福来敲门 is translated into English as "Come The Felicity The Door".
xìngfú lái qiāo mén
幸福来敲门
"Happiness comes knocking at the door"
The syntax of the English on the videodisc cover is completely off the wall. But two of the major online translators are also inexplicable: Google Translate and Baidu Fanyi both have "The Pursuit of Happiness". Bing Translator and DeepL both get the idea that it is happiness coming to knock on one's door.
Selected readings
- "DeepL Translator" (2/16/23)
- "Google Translate is even better now" (9/27/16)
- "Google Translate is even better now, part 2" (5/12/22)
- "The elegance of Google Translate" (3/10/18)
- "The wonders of Google Translate" (9/22/17)
- "Don't blame Google Translate" (2/4/18)
- "Google is scary good" (7/31/17)
- "Love <–> hate (7/22/11)
- "Please prevail in kind" (10/1/16)
Fran said,
November 25, 2023 @ 6:52 am
Far from inexplicable… the 2006 movie 'The Pursuit of Happyness' was titled 当幸福来敲门 for mainland Chinese release, and this type of pairing seems to have a strong effect on translators (such as Google Translate) that incorporate machine learning. The most widely-used translation becomes seen as 'correct' even when it isn't a direct translation at all.
Michael Watts said,
November 25, 2023 @ 10:24 pm
But that would imply that the appropriate translation, for those translators, was "The Pursuit of Happyness", not "The Pursuit of Happiness" as actually observed.