The way we see things

If you use more than one language keyboard on your computer or iPhone, you may have encountered a sometimes humorous, sometimes annoying phenomenon: the auto-correct feature misinterpreting your intentions. 

Usually the auto-correct function works to my advantage – for instance, it just added the letter ‘a’ before ‘ge’ in the word ‘advantage’ because I had neglected to hit the ‘a’ key hard enough.

However, the English auto-correct feature occasionally finds my combination of letters so odd that it decides it cannot possibly help me – and that the best solution is to shift whatever I type into Korean Hangeul.

Interestingly, it does not seem to care whether or not my Hangeul typing makes any sense. For example, if I mistype the word ‘short’ in English by omitting the ‘o’, my computer politely (i.e. without asking me or making a fuss) changes my impossible combination of letters ‘shrt’, into a possible but nonsensical combination in Hangeul, ‘녻’.  

Unfortunately, this does not work vice versa on my computer. If I enter a series of impossible Hangeul letters, my computer – again, politely – lets me carry on typing nonsense and does not switch me back into English.

Those of you with iPhones, who use the English keyboard to send text messages, are familiar with the iPhone’s helpful offers to either correct or finish typing your word, based on what knows to be statistically most likely. If you happen to use keyboards of various languages, however, and neglect to change from one to the other on the iPhone, you may end up transmitting some unintended, ‘interpretative’ translations.

On my iPhone, I have 5 keyboards installed: English, French, Italian, Korean and Spanish. The iPhone will not switch my current keyboard but makes likely spelling suggestions based on that current keyboard.

Unlike on my computer, I do have the option of refusing the suggested word – assuming I catch the misguided guess soon enough – but hitting the space bar is interpreted as a sign of acceptance and the suggestion enters my text, like it or not.

This can have comical results. If I forget that I have selected the French keyboard, and I am typing the English word ‘does’, the iPhone thinks I must mean ‘dors’ – the 2^nd person singular familiar form of ‘sleep’. ‘Just’ becomes ‘jus’ – ‘juice’ in French. ‘The’ is misinterpreted as another beverage, ‘thé’ for ‘tea’.

An Italian keyboard interprets the English ‘please’ to be ‘pelasse’ – the 3^rd person singular imperfect subjunctive form of the verb ‘pelare’, which has many translations in English: to pluck, to shave one’s head, or to fleece (interestingly, ‘to fleece’ has the same figurative, idiomatic meaning as it does in English – to cheat someone).

If, though, I have the English keyboard selected but happen to be typing Spanish text and enter ‘lleguen’ – subjunctive form for ‘they arrive’, in English – the proposed English word is ‘lowdown’…

Accidental language gems, such as the above, are often found in translation. New technology, especially in the form of apps and other devices that support multiple languages, is a great self-generating source of unintended, cross-cultural linguistic fun. What have you ‘found in translation’ recently via some new technology that you’d like to share?