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WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

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Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#241

Post by dbbolton »

candeira wrote: post #239

One of the most recent corporate mishaps I've learned of is Microsoft Nokia calling their phone "Lumia", when in Spain "lumi" or "lumia" is an informal word to mean "prostitute". Your app doesn't reflect that. I was going to say that you need to source slang dictionaries, but this one is in the Diccionario de la Real Academia: http://buscon.rae.es/drae/srv/search?val=lumia And even in the first random online bilingua…

I think Wiktionary is a great and underutilized resource. Fairly good coverage, free, and easily amendable. There is in fact an entry for lumia: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lumia#Spanish

It's actually the basis for a site called The Alternative Dictionaries which features "colorful extracts": http://www.alternative-dictionaries.net/

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#242

Post by schoen »

schoen wrote: post #65

This seems like a nice idea, but many of the comments here are pointing to omissions that the people commenting feel could be serious. I guess I see six kinds of potential difficulties: ① There are so many languages out there, including languages will millions of speakers who might eventually come across your thing. Maybe that's not an issue for tangible products that will be marketed to specific territories. ② There…

A funny page that might be support for point ⑥ is

https://web.archive.org/web/20071112172929/http://members.ao...

If you can take an arbitrary word and find a coincidental homophonous synonym (or antonym) in some other language, you can probably find a coincidental homophonous expletive or sexual reference in some other language too!

(These coincidences are not cognates -- that's part of what "coincidence" means here.)

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#246

Post by schoen »

mcorrand wrote: post #16

"bite" is safe according to this tool. Any french speaker does a double take when they see that word though, especially in certain sentences. For reference: https://askafrenchguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/petite-bites-... Edit: Yes, I have submitted it to the database, it should get vetted eventually. A crowdsourced process for the vetting could be fun too!

I remember a native French speaker was kind of disturbed by the sentence "où est ma chatte?", which is the sample French sentence Alice thinks of in Alice in Wonderland when she speculates that mice might speak French or Latin instead of English. (In the original story, it was disturbing to the mouse, too, though for a different reason!)

(Edit: this site's database recognizes "chatte" as a concern in French.)

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#247

Post by stephengillie »

gus_massa wrote: post #122
mrleinad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searched several spanish words, nothing was found. I guess no support for spanish yet?

One detail to consider about Spanish is that each country has it local variation, so there are some words that are totally safe in some countries but have a totally different unwanted meaning in others. For example "coger" means "pick" in Span and "fuck" in Argentina. (If you say it in Argentina with a Spanish accent the you will not get into troubles, but the people will give a subtle weird look and someone will exp…

How is this different from English? Another poster mentioned "knob" being offensive in the UK but it's an everyday word here in Seattle. (It means "door handle".)

How is the "coger" example different?

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#248

Post by stephengillie »

foldr wrote: post #175
Abraln wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely very important to realize that Spanish-speaking countries, while nominally speaking the same language, are very different. Spain has an entire verb tense that is not in Mexican Spanish. And unconfirmed example I have heard is pico de gallo. In Mexican Spanish it means something that's not too dissimilar from salsa, yet in some parts of South America, pico means penis. I heard there was an issue with a…

>Spain has an entire verb tense that is not in Mexican Spanish. Are you sure you mean tense? The verb has an additional form in each tense because of vosotros, but there are no additional tenses so far as I know.

The first person informal plural (vos, vosotros) form of verbs isn't used outside Spain. Or maybe it's just not used in Latin America. Source: high school Spanish.

Re: WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

#250

Post by jpatokal »

616c wrote: post #185

Obligatory Arabic story of the last few years: the Pakistani ambassador who was rejected for service in the Gulf, because his name is Akbar Zib. This is Arabic for biggest cock. https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%... No reputable source mentions this; only crap newspapers in different countries mention this. But every person I know in the Arab world knows this internet meme. Almost as bad as…

A former Finnish ambassador to Cairo had the first names "Aapo Esa". As classic/written Arabic has neither "p" not "e", this turned into "Abu Isa", meaning "Father of Jesus"!

This wasn't actually quite as hilarious in Arabic as you'd think, since "Isa" is a fairly common first name and "Abu X" is a standard way to refer to a man with a son, but definitely good for a few chuckles back home...

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