Israelis can recognise sarcasm

A Great Catchy Name: Semi-Supervised Recognition of Sarcastic Sentences in Online Product Reviews. What an amusing title for a research report on teaching computers to detect sarcasm in written text.

Computer scientists at a university in Israel 'taught' an algorithm to recognise sarcasm by showing it about 5,500 sentences from Amazon product reviews that human volunteers said were or were not sarcastic.

This page has a few of the sarcastic reviews.

Here are some definitions of sarcasm.

I wonder if they'll buy the algorithm a graduation gift now that it's finished learning how to communicate more fully with the human race. They could buy it a downloadable punctution mark for sarcasm, the SarcMark.

an unnecessary comma?

Reading about the Duchess of York today in The Age newspaper, I had to pause to think about the meaning of one sentence:

The man who inveigled the duchess into a long, boozy dinner, the sight of $US40,000 ($A48,000) in fresh notes beside an ashtray, and a bottle of wine afterwards is Mahzer Mahmood, whose elaborate stings have trapped celebrities, royals and crooks.

It's a sentence that sets the scene clearly, and I could imagine the duchess sitting there looking longingly at the money, but I had trouble with comprehending its meaning. At first I thought perhaps a comma, following the word afterwards, would make it clearer.

But then I remembered the rule that we should not use a comma between the subject and the verb. At its simplest, the above sentence is The man is Mahzer Mahmood. So we wouldn't want a comma before is.

So I guess it's just one of those long sentences that are correct but take a moment or two to process. If I'd written it, I would have put that comma in but I think I would have been wrong.

playing with the Google online translator

Mary made a comment on my recent post about the Frying Dragon mistranslation from Chinese. She mentioned a game on the Australian music quiz television program, Spicks and Specks. In the game the lyrics of a song are translated into Japanese using an online web program. Then they're translated back into English and the players have to work out what song it was.

I couldn't resist trying it out, of course. I thought I'd try Hindi.

Here's my song:

If you're happy and you know it,
clap your hands.
If you're happy and you know it,
clap your hands.
If you're happy and you know it,
Then you'd really
better show it,
If you're happy and you know it,
clap your hands.

And here's what I got:

अगर आप खुश हैं और आप इसे जानते हैं,
अपने हाथ ताली.
अगर आप खुश हैं और आप इसे जानते हैं,
अपने हाथ ताली.
अगर आप खुश हैं और आप इसे जानते हैं,
तो क्या तुम सच में चाहते हैं
बेहतर यह दिखाने के लिए,
अगर आप खुश हैं और आप इसे जानते हैं,
अपने हाथ ताली.

Okay, now to translate it back to English:

If you are happy and you know it,
Clap your hands.
If you are happy and you know it,
Clap your hands.
If you are happy and you know it,
If you really want
Better to show it,
If you are happy and you know it,
Clap your hands.

Hey, pretty good!

So, let's try Chinese:

如果你感到快樂，你知道它，
拍拍你的手。
如果你感到快樂，你知道它，
拍拍你的手。
如果你感到快樂，你知道它，
然後你真想
更好地表現出來，
如果你感到快樂，你知道它，
拍拍你的手。

And back to English:

If you feel happy, you know it,
Clap your hands.
If you feel happy, you know it,
Clap your hands.
If you feel happy, you know it,
Then you really want to
Better performance out
If you feel happy, you know it,
Clap your hands.

I wonder why Hindi came out so much closer to the original?

Okay, can't resist trying Japanese:

あなたは満足している場合はそれを知って、
あなたの手をたたく。
あなたは満足している場合はそれを知って、
あなたの手をたたく。
あなたは満足している場合はそれを知って、
次に、あなたが本当にしたい
より、それを示す
あなたは満足している場合はそれを知って、
あなたの手をたたく。

And, back to English:

If you know it is satisfied,
Clap your hands.
If you know it is satisfied,
Clap your hands.
If you know it is satisfied,
Then you really want
More, it shows
If you know it is satisfied,
Clap your hands.

Oh, I must stop! It would be too, too easy to get addicted to this game. I wonder why the imperative verb comes out okay in every translation. Must think about it...

Can't resist one more - Basque, a language that is very different from other European languages.

zu zoriontsu bazara eta badakizu,
clap eskuak.
zu zoriontsu bazara eta badakizu,
clap eskuak.
zu zoriontsu bazara eta badakizu,
Ondoren, benetan zenuke
hobeto erakusten du,
zu zoriontsu bazara eta badakizu,
clap eskuak.

And back to English:

If you're happy and you know,
clap your hands.
If you're happy and you know,
clap your hands.
If you're happy and you know,
Then, you really
more shows
If you're happy and you know,
clap your hands.


MUST make myself stop! But I wonder whether a German-English one would be virtually perfect, given that the two languages are so similar. Or, maybe, Dutch-English...

飞龙 and the frying dragon lock

Why is it SO amusing when we read a translation from Chinese that involves the letter 'R' instead of 'L'?



I bought a lock recently, and I'll freely admit I purchased it only because the name on the box made me feel happy.Frying dragon. I had visions of a cute little children's story about a lonely dragon who succeeds in becoming Mr Popularity by frying up foods for the local villagers who haven't invented fire yet.

Or a dragon who doesn't like raw food and invents a method of heating up a giant pan so he can fry up a giant hamburger.

Or...

The possibilities are endless.

A search of the internet actually finds sites called Frying Dragon, but I hesitate to put links here as they seem to be unusual sites.

A Chinese colleague translated the paper insert in the box, and told me the fifth and sixth characters in the last line (飞龙) say flying dragon in English.



What a pity the company didn't check the work of their translator. On the other hand, their amusing mistranslation has resulted in one more sale. I don't need this lock. But I bought it.

The question of translating brand names between two such different languages and cultures presents its own problems - I read with great interest an article on this topic.

verbing - using a noun as a verb

I’ve read a new word lately. It’s the verb to Milo. Weird. I noticed it on the label of my new tin of this delicious drink.



I presume it’s an advertising campaign hoping to cash in on the impact of verbing, the use of a noun as a verb. Some people get upset when language is altered in this way, but it’s just one one of the ways languages change and adapt to modern life. It's often the subject of discussion on the Net.

It’s an old process - Shakespeare, for instance, was a master of the art and examples abound of his use of verbs as nouns. I read somewhere that he introduced nearly three thousand new words into the language. He loved using nouns as verbs. For instance, ‘I’ll unhair thy head’ or ‘the thunder would not peace at my bidding’. Other verbal expressions first used by Shakespeare and now accepted as good English are to champion, to humor, to elbow and to rant.

Henry Bolingbroke, in the play “Richard II”, says of his enemies that he will make sure that ‘Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels’. If you have ever been followed around your house by your dog, nudging at your calf, you know the image that Shakespeare conveyed so succinctly.

However, I can’t see the new verb, to Milo, catching on. In fact when I went to the wesite on the label of the tin, the promotion of this campaign was already finished!

skewiff

After enjoying the novel Jack Maggs by Peter Carey, I read a review of it on his website. The review's by Peter Kemp, in the Sunday Times of September 21, 1997 and in part he says:

Freakish figures with quirky mannerisms and odd names - Mrs Halfstairs, Captain Constable - lurk in skewwhiff little rooms or down narrow corridors lined with ancient, mildewed ballgowns.

Skewwhiff - a word I've used all my life but never seen written. I would have expected it to be skewiff, so I searched for that spelling.

Wordnik has some citations of this spelling, but no definitions. A not-too-persistent search found some discussion of this spelling, but no authoritative definitions.

Skewwhiff, however, appears on lots of dictionary sites. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines skew-whiff as not straight (=crooked) and points out that it isn't used before a noun. But note that Peter Kemp in the quote above has used it before a noun.

The Urban Dictionary has two spellings - skew-wiff, meaning all messy, disheveled. Colloquial British term somehow derived from "askew"
and skew-whiff, defined as turned or twisted toward one side. Common usage in the UK.

My mum came from Edinburgh, and in our family we still retain a few northern English, lowland Scottish expressions, so I think that might be why we grew up saying this word.

The Viking Network relates the word askew - which we didn't use - to skew-whiff and says they're both of Scandinavian origin.