Comments on: Eddiecoms #3: “…I am stunned why this twist of fate didn’t took place earlier!”

By: cardinalrobbins

cardinalrobbins — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:23:44 +0000

Bufo, those are a total hoot! I gave a perverse sense of humor and love things like this. Reminds me of assembly instructions for large items that have been badly translated from Chinese or Japanese instruction manuals. I now know to keep an eye out for these when I launch my own site. Anything with a link back to a product will be deleted — but not until I’ve enjoyed a good laugh at their expense.

By: Jen White

Jen White — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 03:29:41 +0000

I agree that the writer’s first language may not be English. I have seen similar errors when proofing newsletters written by writers from other countries.

By: Bufo Calvin

Bufo Calvin — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 02:52:27 +0000

Thanks for writing, Bailey!

Thanks for letting me know you enjoyed them! I honestly wasn’t sure if anybody else liked reading these.

I’m leaning tonight towards the idea of machine translation. I’ve seen some bizarre results from that.

Here’s my current hypothesis:

A person advertises a service to speakers of a different language than English, and the ad is in that language. For, say, twenty dollars, that person will post English language comments on blogs that link back to the purchaser’s website.

You ask why people do them: it’s pretty clearly advertising. I don’t include the poster’s information, but it is commonly to a website that sells something. Some of them are even pretty obvious, saying something like, “Click over here for a fabulous toenail clipper!”

By: Bailey

Bailey — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 01:53:31 +0000

Ah, these are always entertaining! Thanks for the laugh!

My question though, is how these things start. The majority of these don’t use proper grammar, or even bad grammar that’s used in everyday speech. Do you think computers assemble these, or are they (badly) translated from another language?
If they didn’t give themselves away so obviously, they’d certainly have a better success rate…
Oh, and do you know why they are sent out in the first place?