I am sometimes impressed how far machine translations have come. This is when we’re talking English-German. I still find faults and errors and particularly the nuances often get lost which is where machine translations can be dangerous and I am therefore an advocate for human translators, still.

But when other languages are involved the results can often be complete gobble-di-gook. This morning I got the following message: “Vergiss es, ich drehe den Filter hinter mir her.” More or less: “Forget it, I turn the filter behind me.”

It took me a bit but I pride myself in understanding what the Arabic speaking student wanted me to say. He really meant:

“Forget me coming to class today.” or rather: “Sorry, I cannot come to class today.”

“I am having problems with breathing and I have to carry a breathing apparatus with me at all times.”

Now I know this because I know the student, I know that he has breathing issues and he once told me about a respirator he needs to use occasionally. This knowledge replaces my lack of Arabic, I could make a logical deduction and infer meaning where the machine only produced gobble-di-gook.

Ragtag Daily Prompt: Gobbledigook