There's no X in espresso

#2: Post by **jpboyt** » June 8th, 2012, 2:18 pm

There is when I spell it...Besides Americans don't drink Espresso. We drink "Foo-Foo" drinks from the drive through -X-press-O- stand.
jpboyt

#3: Post by **LaDan** » June 8th, 2012, 10:43 pm

Hmm...

1. Go to translate/google.com
2. Choose from: English To: Italian
3. In the English box, type the word "express".

4. Watch the magic happens in the "Italian" box....

#4: Post by **cafeIKE** » June 9th, 2012, 1:28 pm

be interesting to try on a computer in a freight forwarder's office who has no interest in coffee...

#5: Post by **another_jim** » June 9th, 2012, 2:06 pm

An espresso in Italy is un cafe or un dopio; while espresso means done to order. If you order "un cafe espresso," they may think you've been asleep since the 19th century.

But we could write Google and demand their translation software pay more attention to coffee

#6: Post by **KScarfeBeckett** » June 9th, 2012, 3:12 pm

Oddly enough, when I try 'There's no "s" in expresso' (with quotation marks around the 's' and normal spacing), the Italian translation retains 'x' in the e-word.

Google can be trusted to translate creatively as occasion demands. The first three sentences of How to Adjust Dose and Grind Settings by Taste, fed through 120 or so successive retranslations, become:

California Gas, natural or artificial, power, good music, black and white gyezens map.

#7: Post by **Anvan** » June 9th, 2012, 3:21 pm

cafeIKE wrote:be interesting to try on a computer in a freight forwarder's office who has no interest in coffee...

#8: Post by **another_jim** » June 9th, 2012, 5:29 pm

KScarfeBeckett wrote:California Gas, natural or artificial, power, good music, black and white gyezens map.

Does the back and forth translation stabilize at this point? Perhaps we need to map the interlingual kernel space and keep everything we think and say in that realm. Then nothing would ever get lost in translation.

#9: Post by **KScarfeBeckett** » June 10th, 2012, 7:17 am

another_jim wrote:Does the back and forth translation stabilize at this point?

Sadly, no -- just a convenient resting place. Although Google Translate will distill apparently irreducible phrases involving colours, place-names, concrete nouns and verbs etc, the final phrase varies according to the order taken through languages. And Google's interlingual kernel space (nice) is not Everyman's. It leans towards west-coast USA, and inserts developed-world features such as AI, 'add to your shopping cart', and Winnie-the-Pooh. (Into Ginsberg's Howl; nothing is sacred.)

Though 'espresso' is proper and Italian, Italian is AD, the comic strip BC. Google translates the string 'espresso' from Italian into Latin as 'exprimitur' but from English to Latin resorts to 'Lorem ipsum dolor'

Meanwhile the Latin for 'coffee' in googlekerneldom is 'capulus', which Wikipedia says is also the name for a genus of small sea snails. Hurrah, I've accidentally fallen back on topic: how many clams for an e[x]presso?

#10: Post by **another_jim** » June 10th, 2012, 10:45 am

KScarfeBeckett wrote:Though 'espresso' is proper and Italian, Italian is AD, the comic strip BC. Google translates the string 'espresso' from Italian into Latin as 'exprimitur' but from English to Latin resorts to 'Lorem ipsum dolor' Meanwhile the Latin for 'coffee' in googlekerneldom is 'capulus', which Wikipedia says is also the name for a genus of small sea snails. Hurrah, I've accidentally fallen back on topic: how many clams for an e[x]presso?

(whatever smiley espresses for awe)

If there is a basic level or common human world of actions, attitudes, things, natural kinds, and landscapes that allow people to learn new languages or move between cultures, I guess translation software has yet to learn about it. That should be the realm of meaning in which back and forth translations would stabilize.