Found in Translation

Someone had posted several images that had text in Spanish. I was able to to piece out the sentences on my own to get get the joke. However one of the phrases threw me. “¡más fuerte!” in English technically translates to “Stronger!” That was fine and all for the joke, but I was reasonably sure the person meant “Harder!” Now, I know the word ‘hard’ in Spanish is duro, but because my Spanish is horrible I decided to run the words through good old Google Translate.

Yeah… About that…

Anyone familiar with Google Translate understands that while you will get the literal translation of an individual word, but the exact meaning of sentences, phrases and especially colloquialisms can sometimes get lost in translation. To combat such Google will often offer alternatives of what it thinks you may be searching. Thus today’s slice…

First, I tried a Spanish to English translation of fuerte and was given the translation of ‘stronger’ which I expected. The fun arrived when I then switched it to translate from English to Spanish and entered the word ‘harder’. You can see the alternate suggestions in the screencap below:

Google translate offering an unexpected phrase to translate.
Screencap of humorous, to me, Google Translate where one of the suggested phrases of what I might be searching for the word ‘harder’ is “harder daddy.”

I know the suggestions come from Google’s algorithms. These algorithms are based on the phrases most asked for by users. That it is the next suggested thing offer after the literal item to be translated means there are a considerable amount of “daddies” out there being asked to display a show a strength.

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It is Day 4 of the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge for 2020. Stop in and see how others are slicing it up today!

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