Lost In The Translation

Welcome to my 1500th subscriber!  Thanks so much for your support!

I have been in the process of moving some of my email from an old address to one I check every day, and eliminating subscriptions to newsletters I no longer read, etc. Today in my inbox was an invitation from my old internet marketing friend, Beth Schmillen, to "stumble" a website called "Lost in Translation."

As a linguistics minor, I have never lost my love of the mechanics of language, or my fascination with the relationship between biology and the human ability to speak different languages. As an internet marketer who has many team members from other countries, I have struggled for years trying to make use of inadequate translation software trying to communicate the language of my industry. Let's face it, network marketing has its own language, and the concepts often are lost in the translation.

Back in the '90s, many of my international team members did not speak English. Now translation software is usually not needed. Most of my international team members speak flawless English - it is mostly the Americans who cannot speak English.

dude hahah u r kiddin me yo i know how to transl8

No doubt.


I wrote about translation software in this space a few years ago in an article called International Trafficking and My 15 Minutes of Fame, which also sports the above screenshot of my blog in Korean!

But this website that Beth sent me is even funnier, because it enables you to enter an English phrase and translate it  back and forth from English to other languages and back - usually giving you a totally incomprehensible version of what you originally entered.

Kind of like the old game "Telephone" we played when I was a kid, where you had a line of kids and whispered something into the ear of each one in turn, and ending up with hilarious results at the end.

For instance,  "what goes up, must come down" became "the iron and steel industry of the increase must consider."  What?

Here's how:

Original English Text:
what goes up, must come down
Translated to Japanese:
上がる何が、来なければな らない
Translated back to English:
Something which rises must come,
Translated to Chinese:
上升的事必须来，
Translated back to English:
The rise matter must come,
Translated to French:
La matière d'élévation doit venir,
Translated back to English:
The matter of rise must come,
Translated to German:
Der Stoff des Anstiegs muss kommen,
Translated back to English:
The material of the rise must come,
Translated to Italian:
Il materiale dell'aumento deve venire,
Translated back to English:
The material of the increase must come,
Translated to Portuguese:
O material do aumento deve vir,
Translated back to English:
The material of the increase must see,
Translated to Spanish:
El material del aumento debe considerar,
Translated back to English:
The material of the increase must consider,
Translated to French:
Le matériel de l'augmentation doit considérer,
Translated back to English:
The hardware of the increase must consider,
Translated to German:
Die Hardware der Zunahme muss betrachten,
Translated back to English:
The hardware of the increase must regard,
Translated to Italian:
Il hardware dell'aumento deve considerare,
Translated back to English:
The hardware of the increase must consider,
Translated to Portuguese:
A ferragem do aumento deve considerar,
Translated back to English:
The ironwork of the increase must consider,
Translated to Spanish:
La industria siderúrgica del aumento debe considerar,
Translated back to English:
The iron and steel industry of the increase must consider,

In all fairness, this translation is powered by the venerable "Babelfish" - which was around in the '90s and has been supplanted by other better translation engines.  But it is still hilarious.  Visit the site and put in your own phrase and see what you come up with.

What has been your experience, if any, with translation software?  Do you have a recommendation?

PS - If you have not spent any time on Stumbleupon, block out a couple of hours because you never know where you will end up.  Very addictive!

Dietary Supplements in the Crosshairs DO SOMETHING!

Are you as sick to death of Stealth Legislation as I am?

Not satisfied to control healthcare, they snuck a provision into Obamacare that would also give them control of student loans (because we all know those are related, right??). 

Now Congressman Henry Waxman of California (a Democrat - surprise!) snuck a provision into the recently passed Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that will regulate your dietary supplements out of existence.

The recent move by the FDA against Diamond Walnuts to have walnuts (I kid you not) declared a drug shows their willingness to do anything, no matter how stupid and arbitary, in order to control your access to anything that might actually be good for you.

Especially if it will not make the drug companies money.

"Oh, here she goes again," you are thinking, "railing against the [Democrats, German judges, UN, government, fill-in-the-other-blank] and the drug companies. What does that have to do with home schooling or home business?"

Network marketers and purveyors of any kind of health supplement - listen up! A lot of us have businesses that will be affected if this happens. 

Does your business depend on any kind of vitamin, miracle juice, joint relief, or any other non-prescription, non-pharmaceutical product that you can't make any health claims about even though the anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of your product is substantial?

Walnuts. A drug. Right.

How much more so Tahitian Noni, Xango, Monavie, Vemma, "The Wellness Company" that doesn't allow their name to be mentioned, FHTM's True Essentials, Shaklee, healthy chocolate, Max XGL,  and umptygazillion more health supplements?

I don't want to hear that you don't care about politics.  Even if in a general way you don't care about health freedom, and think the government taking over everything is just hunky dory, surely at least you will care when your "Plan B" MLM income is  wiped out, crushed under the weight of government scrutiny and regulation.

The Senate is expected to vote on this monstrosity of a  finance “reform” bill as early as this weekend. Please do something to make sure that it does not include a provision going far beyond finance that could be used against supplements. This could take the form of and amendment that would give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) power to impose new regulations without prior Congressional approval, such as the one inserted into the House version that was passed.

Read the article at the Alliance for Natural Health and learn how you can help.

International Trafficking and My 15 Minutes of Fame

A special welcome to my Asian "Blog Explosion" readers! Please read this and make a comment. You'll see why in a minute.

The power of the internet still amazes me. Internet marketing has completely changed since I first ventured into this world in 1997.

You can have a conversation with someone on the phone and by secretly googling your subject matter can sound like an expert on a topic you had barely heard of moments before.

Now there are millions of websites about internet marketing, rather than only a few thousand.

"Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" is now called "Yahoo!"

Information products deliverable online eliminate the expense - not to mention customs hassles - of shipping products.

You can have develop a huge organization in a company and never have met a single one of them. For that matter, you may know people on the internet better than you know your own neighbors.

Your little homeschool (or other niche topic) blog can have a worldwide audience.


I expect to have a fair amount of international traffic because of my listing at Blog Explosion. Blog Explosion is a directory, pinging service and traffic exchange from which you can earn traffic to your blog by viewing other blogs. I have found a number of very interesting blogs from around the world that I would likely never have seen if not for my Blog Explosion membership, many of them from Asian countries.

I was checking my stats today and saw that someone searched on "Network of Five Elements" on the Google engine in Korea, and up popped my blog - then they translated it using Google's instant translation into Korean. The text (except for "Critelli", "networkers", and "homeschool") is entirely in Korean.

I hope my topic was not lost in the translation. I have no idea if this translation is accurate. Perhaps instant translation software has dramatically improved since the early days of Alta Vista and Babelfish. I am fairly sure my article about internet marketing was NOT what this person was really looking for.

But it was strange to see my picture and my blog in another language. It reminded me that both homeschooling and network marketing have their own unique vocabularies, and to be careful to describe things in terms that can be easily translated.

Though it would not be a stretch to say that my Asian readers are more proficient in English than some of the Americans I have encountered online.

I would be very interested in comments here from my Blog Explosion audience, particularly anyone who can tell me if what this article says in Korean bears any resemblance to the meaning of my original article. Blogger has an easy translation widget that I would consider enabling if I had any confidence that my article would not be lost in the translation.

Readers, help me out here?