‘My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels’ in Many Languages

https://omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm

by dbasedweeb • 8 years ago

211 103 8 years ago

The fact that someone translated this into Sumerian made me laugh out loud. My brain finds strange things funny sometimes.

basementcat• 8 years ago

How did they figure out how to write 'hovercraft' in Sumerian? Was there a 'Rosetta Stone' like codex describing futuristic transportation technology?

LoSboccacc• 8 years ago

going by the latin translation, ancient languages are just flying + boat

coldtea• 8 years ago

Hovercraft might be future technology, but "hover" and "craft" e.g. "vehicle that hovers" or "carriage that hovers" etc is not.

biztos• 8 years ago

The German and (ironically?) Hungarian translations both use "air-pillow" for the hovering part, though in German they translated it as "vehicle" and in Hungarian as "boat." Go figure.

[edit] "air-pillow" is presumably meant to be read as "air-cushioned" but in both cases the actual word was "pillow"

hailk• 8 years ago

Conversions seems freely interpreted. In Gujarati it's `હોવેરક્રાફ્ટ`, transliterates to `hovercraft`, no meaning. In Malayalam `പറക്കും-പേടകം` translates to `Flying-vehicle`. In Hindi `ṃḍarāne vālī nāv` translates to `Floating boat`. In Marathi `माझी होडी मासळयांनी भरली आहे` it just says, `My boat is full of fish`.

vanderZwan• 8 years ago

Your remark somehow caused me to fall down an internet rabbit hole.

First I remembered reading a story on the internet that in Bislama, one of the official languages of the island nation of Vanuatu, the word for Helicopter is "mixmaster blong Jesus Christ". The explanation being that blades of a helicopter are like a blender, and Jesus Christ went to heaven, so "the blender that rises up to heaven".

Then, before replying with that, I wondered if there actually was any proper source for that. Now, the official bislama.org website translates helicopter to "helikopta", so we already know that this is not true[0]. Also, surely a quirk like this would be mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the language, and it is not[1]. So where did the story come from?

The only primary source that I have found for this claim is a story from the 1980s by Richard Shears, a journalist for the London Daily Mail[2].

“Consequently, some people spoke French, other English. The original inhabitants adopted Bislama, a type of pidgin English. They also used a picture language that seemed to combine a bit of English and pidgin, resulting in a brassiere being described as “basket blong titty”. A toothbrush was “broom blong tut” (brush belonging to tooth), a helicopter was “Mixmaster blong Jesus Christ”.

Technically, it might be the case that this was a Bislama way of describing a helicopter forty years ago. But until we get some native speakers to confirm or deny this, it sounds a bit unlikely. While this is not really evidence, the writing style also makes it sound more like made up a "haha look at the primitive natives"-story.

First we get the "basket blong titty" example. Because natives don't wear bras of course, they're nudes, so they don't have a word for it. But they have baskets, and a brassiere is something to hold breasts. Hence, basket blong titty. Ha. ha. (note how of all examples they could have chosen, they zoomed in on one that involves the word "titty"). Similarly: "haha, they do not make a distinction between brooms and brushes because they are simple, so they call a toothbrush a "broom blong tut". Note: bismata.org translates "broom" as "brum", and "toothbrush" as "tutbras". Brassiere is not in their on-line dictionary yet.

And then, once you follow that logic and accept that those two things might be true, 'mixmaster blong Jesus Christ' seems both outlandish and believable at once because it is both funny and conveniently fits preconceived notions of simple, primitive island natives.

But why would the Vanatu people know what a blender is, but instead of saying blender make up a simple word "mixmaster"? Why would the first association be a blender, but not a boat propeller, which seems a lot more likely for an island nation? Why would they know about the story of Jesus Christ and his ascension, and make that the first association?

I forwarded this little investigation to Snopes with the request to get to the bottom of this and either fully debunk it or, in the unlikely case that it is/was true, confirm it.

[0] http://www.bislama.org/translate

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bislama

[2] https://nursemyra.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/mixmaster-blong-j...

masteruvpuppetz2• 8 years ago

Fork!! no Urdu?

fahadkhan2• 8 years ago

There's a invitation to contact the author with additions at the bottom of the page. I would if I knew what eel and hovercraft are in Urdu.

masteruvpuppetz2• 8 years ago

idk!!

"machli" and "hawai kashti" would do

mncharity• 8 years ago

ہوور کرافٹ (hovercraft) or اے سی وی (ACV)?

Source: http://advancepakistan.com/2017/09/20/hovercraft/ . Google translate works on both, but translates "hovercraft" as ہورچرک . The source was found by looking up the most common Urdu word (کے), and googling for "کے hovercraft".

exabrial2• 8 years ago

I spit my milk out on the Scottish one

jwilk• 8 years ago

Do you mean Scots or Scottish Gaelic?

ryan-allen2• 8 years ago

I'm guessing they meant Scots, there are some variations:

Ma hovercraft's full o eels

Ma hovercraft's lippin-fou wi eels

Ma hovercraft's lippit wi eels

Ma hovercraft's breemin' ower wi eels

See ma hovercraft? See eels? Hit's pure hoachin wi them.

tylerhou2• 8 years ago

The Latin is somewhat awkward:

Mea navis volitans anguillis plena est

This is technically correct, but `anguillis` generally should be in the genitive case "anguillarum" for classical Latin - that is, "full 'of' eels", instead of the ablative which is used here, "full 'by means of/with respect to' eels".

Navis volitans mihi anguillis plena est

The same criticism for `anguillis` applies here. Also, the usage of the dative of possession (mihi) is non-standard because it is usually reserved when you want to emphasize that a person has possession: "nomen mihi est Bob" -- "my name is Bob". The fact that I have a hovercraft isn't really the focus of the sentence - the fact that it is full of eels is far more interesting. It's not technically wrong, but I don't think any Roman would translate this sentence this way.

pfortuny• 8 years ago

AFAIK plenus requires an ablative: like in “gratia plena” (full of grace), “pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua” (heavens and earth are full of your glory) etc...

rileyphone• 8 years ago

The Wiktionary page for plenūs states it moved from the genitive to the ablative in later Latin (eg liturgical), so it seems your both right!

tylerhou2• 8 years ago

Plenus can take an ablative (cf. Allen and Greenough, §409a) but it can also take an objective genitive (cf. §349a). I'm pretty sure the objective genitive is preferred (at least in poetry, according to A&G), but I could be wrong.

Allen and Greenough: https://books.google.com/books/about/Allen_and_Greenough_s_N..., see pages 216-217 (§349a) and 256 (§409a).

al2o3cr• 8 years ago

"people called Romanes they go to the house??"

Zhyl• 8 years ago

"Now write it out 100 times. Or I'll cut your balls off."

bhaak2• 8 years ago

Wikipedia has an IMO better translation: "mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_(M)

My Latin is rusty but "navis aëricumbens" invokes the image of a ship driving through the air like a skiff through water. Much better than just "flying ship" which reminds me more of an airplane than a hovercraft.

When in doubt you can always look what words the modern Romance languages use. Most seem to have a word similar to French "aéroglisseur", air glider.

singingfish• 8 years ago

this is my go to page for testing unicode stuff :)

ekke• 8 years ago

This is HN after all - some version of ES/JS:

  class Eel {
      valueOf () { 
          return 'https://imgflip.com/meme/Bad-Joke-Eel';
      }
  }

  const craftCapacity = 331,
        hovercraft = Array.from(Array(craftCapacity), () => new Eel);

Klathmon4• 8 years ago

It's "My hovercraft is full of eels", not "My hovercraft has an arbitrary amount of eels in it"!

Now looking at the ES5 spec [0], the max length of an array is an unsigned 32-bit integer due to the `ToUint32` operation that the spec defines. So that means our `craftCapacity` here needs to be 2^32-1

Sadly we can't use `Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER` here because that assumes double-precision floating points as the underlying storage method, so we just have to hardcode our value:

  const hovercraft = Array(4294967295).map(() => 'https://imgflip.com/meme/Bad-Joke-Eel')

[0] While the spec says this in a roundabout way, i'm not sure if any implementations actually adhere to this limit, and i'd guess most convert the array to a hashtable internally long before it gets to that size.

bebe3000• 8 years ago

ekke assumed the hovercraft can hold at most 331 eels. You assumed it holds 4 billion eels. Who's right? I don't know but a billion eels sounds far off.

JasonFruit2• 8 years ago

While we're nitpicking, unless you have partial eels, it's arbitrary number, not amount. That calls to mind measuring blended eel, of which I don't want to make a career.

flyingcircus32• 8 years ago

Whoa, whoa. Did you just assume the transitive property of sound pressure fluctuating languages with voltage fluctuating languages? You should check your access privilege.

Let me guess, I bet you think people can transmit information via the fluctuation of electromagnetic waves too. Brilliant!

pjmlp2• 8 years ago

Mirandese

L miu hobercraft stá cheno d'anguias

petecox• 8 years ago

It's interesting that a number of Romance languages, but notably not Spanish or French, prefix the subject pronoun (my) with a definite article.

The-my-hovercraft

iopq• 8 years ago

Es el mio is perfectly good Spanish

nanis• 8 years ago

The Turkish translation (rather than word substitution) would be: "Hoverkraftımı mürenler (or just müren) bastı".

yantrams• 8 years ago

This got me thinking about what an appropriate word for hovercraft in Sanskrit could be. Sarva-Madhyama-Plavaka maybe? Translates to something that jumps/glides over all media.

Edits: Grammar

monster_group• 8 years ago

Wouldn't प्लवयानम् be sufficient (literally translates to hover-vehicle)? Full sentence would be मम प्लवयानं जलव्यालैः सम्मर्दम्।

Ritsuko_akagi• 8 years ago

juts wanted to say eel is called as kucia "কুচিয়া" in assamese but the page says eel.

coldcode2• 8 years ago

Sadly no pronunciation of the Romulan "Arham rrh'eilln selae'enh ihircrycae'eri nnea drihaen'in'hhuien"

jdmichal• 8 years ago

/a.ɾʰam r̩ʰ.eɪ.l̩n sɛ.le.ɛɲ i.hir.kɾɪ.ke.ɛ.ɾi nːɛ.a dɾi.hen.in.xuɪ.ɛn/

This is put together using the pronunciation guide present on rihan.org, which does not list IPA. So take this as a very rough attempt.

taserian• 8 years ago

I've always wanted a page where it would have the translation of "I'm sorry, but I don't speak a word of X" in perfectly enunciated X for all X in [Languages].

I guess this is the next best thing.

Tephlon• 8 years ago

One of my favourite things to do is say "I'm sorry, I don't speak any French" in perfect French (According to an actual French person).

"Desolée, Je ne parle pas Français"

neelkadia• 8 years ago

Where is Sanskrit!!!?

pimlottc• 8 years ago

Those of a certain age may remember a similar project by Ethan Mollick on what Wikipedia adorably calls the “early web” in which the phrase was “I can eat glass, it does not hurt me”.

The Project is based on the idea that people in a foreign country have an irresistable urge to try to say something in the indigenous tongue. In most cases, however, the best a person can do is "Where is the bathroom?" a phrase that marks them as a tourist. But, if one says "I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me," you will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040201212958/http://hcs.harvar...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can_Eat_Glass

Balgair3• 8 years ago

> But, if one says "I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me," you will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect.

Thanks, now my coffee is all over my desk. ;)

AlphaWeaver• 8 years ago

I enjoyed the conlangs section. It has Klingon, Toki pona, Esperanto, and more!

alistoriv• 8 years ago

Happy to see a Welsh translation, but I'm interested where the word for hovercraft came from. The hofren part comes from hofran (which is just a borrowing of hover), but what about fad?

richardpetersen• 8 years ago

If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?

Balgair3• 8 years ago

The Maori translation is a bit off, as it says that the (poorly translated) hovercraft is made with a peak amount of eel (not plural). It seems a fair number of these translations do not connotate that the hovercraft is filled with eels (plural) but rather that it is an eel (singular) that is taking up a lot of room in the hovercraft.

In general, if you go to google translate, you'll see that this phrase is not well translated. Hovercraft is a tough one in general, and some languages don't have an eel in their vocab. Still, it shows that text translation is not very easy, as environment, persons speaking, and context really matter.

_-__---• 8 years ago

How would one say this in a better Maori translation?

Balgair3• 8 years ago

__ ____ _- ___- _ -_ --- __ -__ _ _- --··-- __ _--- __- ___ - _-- _- -_ - - --- ___ --- __- -_ -__ ___ -- _- _-_ - ·-·-·- __-_ --- _-_ --_ __ ___- _ -- _ --··-- _--_ _-

kaycebasques• 8 years ago

I wish that this site also translated the translations back into English, similar to what many people are doing in this thread.

talonx• 8 years ago

A lot of Indian language translations are a bit off. I wonder how many others that I don't know myself are too?

xelxebar• 8 years ago

The Japanese is also awkward. The recording is also extremely non-native.

zokier• 8 years ago

The Finnish translation, while very much correct, feels bit archaic; I think at least in casual contexts most people would use the form "Minun ilmatyynyalus on täynnä ankeriaita"

The Northern Sámi translation feels wrong, although its grammar never was my strong points I think more correct form would be "Mu áibmofanas lea dievva ággarasaid"; I think the English translation of "Mu áibmofatnasis lea dievva ággarasaid" would roughly be "My hovercraft has full (of) eels"

posterboy2• 8 years ago

My hovercraft has full (of) eels

that wouldn't even surprise me because e.g. French has similar idioms, "il'y'a" ''there is'', literally ''it there has'' (though 'y' is probably not even a word on it's own, ''there is close eough'').

_bxg1• 8 years ago

I'm so glad they have Quenya.

flyingcircus32• 8 years ago

Sometimes I wonder if hackernews has become a reliable training ground for nascent neural networks. This thread of comments perfectly follows the trend of "the best way to find the right answer is to put a bunch of wrong answers on the internet, and just let those hairsplitters sort this out."

I wonder if there were a method by which we could falseify such a hypothesis, and simply check other social media for it's reverberations of falsehoods we intentionally plant, like how organized crime traces down their bugs, er, rats, er leakers, that's the word. Or how a fast Fourier transform looks at a periodic signal, and deduces the component frequencies.

It's probably just a pipe dream though. And we all know there isn't just this series of tubes lying around for us to practice on.

Angostura2• 8 years ago

My nipples explode with delight.

‘My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels’ in Many Languages

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