Weird Facebook translation question
April 27, 2017 5:38 AM   Subscribe

Facebook decided that a comment "wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag" should be translated as "do not do not do not do not do". Is there actually a language where this is a semi-valid translation? Or is this just an interesting software glitch?

My wife made the comment "wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag" on a picture of a happy dog. Facebook helpfully provided a automatic translation of this comment as "do not do not do not do not do". This amused me because it makes no sense to me, and now I'm curious as to how this could have happened.

I know that Facebook's automated translation is basically crap (at least compared to Google's), so perhaps it's not worth trying to track this down too carefully; but if anybody has any insight into this weird behavior, I'd be interested to hear it.
posted by Johnny Assay to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
My first assumption is, you hit somebody's test code for translation.

I spent a lot of years working with lovely crazy engineers; probably a little Easter egg/test because it never got taken out by the engineers building the auto translate function. At least it wasn't hidden porn!
posted by tilde at 5:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [2 favorites]


In my Facebook app if you tap "rate this translation" you can see in the pop-up what the original language was. Not at my computer so can't test on desktop tho!
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Filipino, I believe: wag means "do not" or close enough for Facebook.
posted by RainyJay at 5:45 AM on April 27, 2017 [9 favorites]


yeah, what RainyJay said - example here: https://www.italki.com/question/142539?hl=en-us
posted by aiglet at 5:52 AM on April 27, 2017


In Tagalog the official spelling is huwag, with stress on the last syllable; I assume this gets colloquially shortened to wag (cf. don't from do not).
posted by languagehat at 6:52 AM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]


Best answer: Filipino here. Agreeing with languagehat; "wag" -> " 'wag" -> "huwag" (do not).
posted by Stephanie Duy at 7:13 AM on April 27, 2017 [7 favorites]


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