It's more appropriate to use who instead of that when referring to people, but it's not grammatically incorrect.

I'd probably phrase it more like this to create the desired (as I assume) emphasis:

Even a weird (strange, different, odd?) person can obtain a sensitive position and make a tremendous impact on history.

As it is written, it sounds as if only "weird people" can hold a sensitive position.

This just proves that humans can't yet build machines to perfectly translate languages (and indeed, some languages just can't communicate ideas as effectively as others, so data is lost). Humans are machines.

Ok, as our next activity, we'll translate like l33t h4x0rs.

Well we need to build computers to build such a thing .

I meant "one of those things that machines can't do" as in "as of now", but to be honest, I have my doubts about if such things as AI or GoodTranslator will ever happen. I'll have to see to believe... unless that's not expected to happen until 30th century.

In Finland we watch foreign movies and TV series with original soundtrack and subtitles. Very often the translators (they are all human) do some extra when translating. In one episode of Friends Ross says something like "I wouldn't drink milk from your breast even if it had a picture of a lost kid on it". I remember the Finnish translation went like "...even if there was a sour cream recipy on it" because milk cartons in Finland usually have all kinds of recipies printed on them. I'd like to see some computer doing that kind of translations.

Strange thing is that I saw a re-run of that very same episode of Friends the other night and they had obviously done a new translation for the subtitles (probably another TV channel since previous time). This time the translator completely missed the point and mentioned the picture of a lost kid. I guess many Finns wouldn't know what that is all about. I wouldn't have, if I wouldn't have figured it out the first time because of the clever translation.

Just wanted to say good job to everyone involved. This little experiment was very interesting.

[edit] And I just got confirmation from the CIA that, "...we, the CIA, are not the least bit interested in the content of internet message boards, internet forums or other international forms of communications."

I guess that means everyone is in the clear...

Honestly, who really cares though...

In the 5th sentence it seems like type568 misread "ידוע" as "ידע" and "הופך" as "הפך", which really changed the meaning there, but only the second change had a lasting effect, and even that was gone by the time the Swedish translation ended. And in #1 "John" somehow turned into "Jhon", which almost lasted to the end.

Other than that, Hebrew had almost no lasting negative effect on our translation.

And yeah, it was a lot of fun

(And yeah, the Hebrew in the first post looks correct to me.)

I don't think I'd want them to do that kind of translation if I was the one watching. When I watch it I do so assuming it's the USA, in this case knowing it's New York. We don't have missing children on our milk cartons, but I know that they do in some places so I get the joke. I think it loses some of the joke using a sour cream recipe... Wouldn't it be better anyway for the foreigners to look it up and learn something instead of being mislead about the USA? If American jokes don't make sense to you then why watch the show?

The sentence is ambiguous, but people may infer that. You may be more apt to infer exclusivity on a sentence such as:

Deaf people can apply for this grant.

Without context, translators may add or take away meaning based on their inferences. Inserting a qualifier (e.g., only, even) at the beginning of the sentence would help a lot.

Point taken. Context in english is really important.

That's what they want us to believe.

When I did my translation, I thought about changing it to John as in the PM I received it was Jhon but then I thought "Who am I to change this guy's name?". It eventually (in the last translation) went back to John as in the original sentence.

Curiously, Google translated John as Juan in the first Spanish translation but kept it as John in the second. While Juan would be the Spanish equivalent to John, you really can't change a person's name just like that.

Almost. "Although the results of this experiment has proved this wrong, we can not deny that it was fun while it lasted." would be better. But yes, as I said, Google did surprisingly well on this one. It was lucky...

That's because you fuck at French ^^

Anyway, that was kind of a nice community experience !

I expected the sentence to be changed a lot more due to the multitude of language we used.

The #5 is my preferred, and it looks like we fscked up #2 and #3 more than the others.

I am really impressed by the fact that the meaning hasn't changed THAT much from the start to the final translation.

Good work from you Dario, yay for all the work you put in it !!

Can't say why, but I am happy ^^