Saturday, August 27, 2011

Ten se nejlip má! Right, Peter Griffin?

Good translation is an art, and Google Translate is, well, a fart. It stinks, especially with so-called minor languages, meaning languages not spoken by a lot of people. Like Czech. Admittedly a difficult language that, despite years of study, I have never been able to master. My latest study strategy is to download American television shows, like "Family Guy," with Czech subtitles. That way I get to learn interesting words that you'll find nowhere in standard grammars, like how to call someone a fatass, which, for the record, is tlustoprde ... if you can believe what you read, which, after reading the translation for the theme song, became a bit of a leap of faith — almost as much as taking directions from Google Maps.