As someone who has spent large numbers of years in both the US and the UK, I have nothing inherently against apps / sites that offer to ‘translate ‘ between British and American. I think the idea is sound, it just bugs me that so often the execution is, to use a favorite British phrase, a load of bollocks.
The British to American Slang Dictionary iPhone app is a good example of this. It gets some things right, but also gets a lot wrong and offers up a lot of entries that are way out in WTF-land. For instance, in the screencap above the app has translated ‘how are you ‘ in British to ‘how do you do ‘ in American. What???? Here ‘s the ‘translation ‘ I know for when someone in the UK says how are you: ‘how are you ‘.
Just looking at the app ‘s App Store description gives a big hint that it may not have a real firm grip on its subject matter
Would you ever guess England is so foreign that you need a dictionary just to understand what they are saying in English. Take for example, if some said to you "bung some words here ye barmy bloke and we will translate em to yank in a chivvy" what would you think?
Honestly, if if someone said that to me I ‘d think they ‘d never set foot in Britain and didn ‘t have a clue what they were on about. If you tried out a sentence that borrowed at all from the style of that one in just about any pub I ‘ve ever set foot in, you ‘d likely get a quick lesson on what a ‘kick in the ghoulies ‘ is.
To give the app credit where credit is due, it does get some things right, including some bits of cockney slang and a few good phrases as well
These get outweighed though by the wrong and silly stuff that ‘s in the app. For instance, could we maybe agree that spelling differences do not make for different words or meanings? Jeez
Seriously, if you ‘re on either side of the ‘translation ‘ and you ‘re looking at the word ‘color ‘ or ‘colour ‘ and thinking ‘wow that looks familiar, but I have no idea what it could mean ‘ then yikes, you may want to give up on that whole trying to read thing.
It gets much worse though. We get ridiculous, very region-specific mispronunciations passed off as the British way to say something (literally)
And this handy entry
Which is a bit of Australian slang. For those scoring at home, Aussies are not Brits, Australia is not part of Britain.
And this is a good one
Totally wrong. Snooker and Pool are two completely different sports. Different size tables, completely different rules etc.
If you ‘re looking for a sit-down restaurant in Britain and try asking for chippie recommendations, you may want to keep in mind that chippies are specifically fish & chip takeaway type places. In other words, chippie does not mean restaurant.
This one is also totally wrong. It is the American to American translation 🙁
Here are my two favorite WTF examples
Huh??? What century are we basing our ‘translations ‘ on?
Bleh “ this is a free app so you get what you pay for I guess. But honestly if you ‘re ever heading to the UK you ‘ll want to avoid trusting its translations “ if you don ‘t want to learn what a Glasgow Kiss is fairly quickly. 🙂
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TAGS: bizarro iPhone apps
