<![CDATA[aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form?]]>aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form?

My favorite out-of-context translation fail was some internal status page in Chrome years ago, which described sandboxing status as (translated back to English) "you have trained sufficiently".

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/f408dd6a-5b40-4a91-8b21-d8fe9d6627a0/aah-the-reason-why-the-in-app-kindle-purchase-flow-in-german-has-a-button-labeled-bitte-lesen-which-translates-to-please-read-for-opening-the-purchased-ebook-is-that-someone-mistranslated-read-now-as-if-it-was-meant-in-imperative-formRSS for NodeWed, 15 Apr 2026 12:05:34 GMTSun, 12 Apr 2026 17:57:20 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form? on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:30:05 GMT]]>@freddy @jann

TURKISH TEAMMATE: Oh, yeah, we call this "Microsoft Turkish." The menu items are syntactically incorrect. This happens all the time

ME: FUCK

TEAMMATE: Yeah, well, welcome to our lives

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/fugueish/statuses/116393155338647946https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/fugueish/statuses/116393155338647946Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:30:05 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form? on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:28:59 GMT]]>@freddy huh. as in, there is insufficient guidance from the feature devs on the semantics of a string and so you disagree with other native german speakers on the correct translation even when seeing it in context?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jann/statuses/116393150986669254https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jann/statuses/116393150986669254Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:28:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form? on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:28:51 GMT]]>@freddy @jann It is deeply, deeply offensive to me that people have to set their computers to English.

ME: Holy fuck, what if the person doesn't speak English??

PERSIAN TEAMMATE: Yeah, for those people, the internet is not very accessible

ME: FUCK

TEAMMATE: Yeah, well, welcome to our lives

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/fugueish/statuses/116393150474303532https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/fugueish/statuses/116393150474303532Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:28:51 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form? on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:26:25 GMT]]>@freddy @jann A bunch of years ago, I went on a giant quest to improve translation in Chrome (including getting colleagues to set Chrome to their native languages, which resulted in some 'great' bug reports). Lots of native speakers disagreeing with each other about what words mean. 😞

One thing I discovered: Apparently, nobody on the team had ever set their locale to an RTL language. Text flying in every direction all over the place. I fixed as many of them as I could.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/fugueish/statuses/116393140909941057https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/fugueish/statuses/116393140909941057Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:26:25 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form? on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:22:17 GMT]]>@jann I got into a (mild) argument multiple times with our localizers and gave up. I disagree with them but I also don’t have to live with the feedback they get elsewhere. Firefox in English it is… 🙂

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.security.plumbing/users/freddy/statuses/116393124675603971https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.security.plumbing/users/freddy/statuses/116393124675603971Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:22:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to aah, the reason why the in-app kindle purchase flow in german has a button labeled "Bitte lesen" (which translates to "Please read") for opening the purchased ebook is that someone mistranslated "Read now" as if it was meant in imperative form? on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:04:54 GMT]]>I wonder how many tech workers who speak English as a second language actually dogfood their company's stuff in their native language. I have most stuff on my devices configured to have english UI (except stuff like public transport apps which are probably primarily developed with german UI)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jann/statuses/116393056278549319https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jann/statuses/116393056278549319Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:04:54 GMT