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Translation weirdities

08/18/07 | by Adam | Categories: Technology, Potpourri

While on Arcnet, a IRC-compatible channel populated by former Amigans, I made a slightly disparaging comment about wiener schnitzel. One of the resident German speakers responded with the word:

arschgeige

My German's a bit weak so I popped that into Babelfish. It translated it as "ass-play the violin". I know that sometimes concepts fail to translate between languages and cultures, but if Altavista's done that correctly, it's a very odd insult.

 

1 comment

Comment from: dena [Member]  
dena

*laugh!*

I did some more searching on this and got references to “ass fiddle” and “ass violin"…

I think this is current German slang, and the best reference/explanation I found so far was at this blog:

http://www.logwave.com/
blogs/drb/category/
FE55CGHPC16FZV6515QGXPJ28N5S6JFS/
smart-and-not-so-smart-stuff.htm

Looks to me like you ticked this particular German off… ;)

Nothing quite like meticulously direct and literal translations, are there? :D

08/19/07 @ 08:11
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