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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

#251

Post by _0nac »

arihant wrote: post #71

So this seems to work for a very small subset of the words I typed. Also, it seems to only check against dictionary meaning and not cultural usage. "Tatsu" means "to stand" in Japanese, but is culturally used for erection. This is just an example, I tried a bunch which I know and none were flagged.

"Tatsu" is the verb stem and would not be offensive alone; in fact, like most Japanese words, it has plenty of homonyms including 竜, "dragon".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A4#Japanese

Flagging that would be kind of like flagging "hard" in English. Could it potentially be offensive in the wrong context? Yes. Are there brands where that would be absolutely fine? Yes.

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

#252

Post by jpatokal »

temuze wrote: post #162

This is great! There are certain puns/combos that would be really hard to catch though. For example - the Ford Nova. In Spanish, it literally translates to "no va" "doesn't go". Terrible name for a car. I'm unsure how to make this understand the context of the product, but that would be the next step

Not really: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

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

#253

Post by tacticus »

pavlov wrote: post #230
RIMR wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick, somebody point me in the direction of some witty australian UNIX jokes.

What did the sysadmin buy her wife for Valentine's Day? A rootkit. (Just made that one up... Not genuine Australian. Also, I can't tell jokes.)

well your jokes certainly fit.

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

#254

Post by iamcurious »

Abraln wrote: post #131
gus_massa wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Every spanish speaker can understand and speak Neutral Spanish. The one taught in schools, universities and spoken in dubbed movies. In the same way every english speaker can understand and speak Hollywood English.

In a way, the dialects of spanish are even more regular than the dialects of english. For instance, the spelling is the same of everybody (regulated by The Real Academia Español) and almost everything is spelling phonetically, so the changes in pronunciation are quite regular. If you understand written spanish you can master any pronunciation just by learning a few regular rules.

There are differences in tenses and plenty of slang, but this can be sidestepped by speaking formally (where the are no variation in tenses and there is little difference in vocabulary).

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

#255

Post by SNvD7vEJ »

Yeah, also, a classic one we had here in Sweden:

Honda released this new small car model named "Honda Fitta", and one of the slogans were something like "small on the outside, large on inside".

In Swedish, "Fitta" is a crude word for female genitalia.

The car was quickly renamed "Honda Jazz".

A link to a Swedish article, translated by Google:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

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

#256

Post by afy »

stephengillie wrote: post #248
foldr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There are parts of south america where vosotros is used, but I think what the parent was getting at is that it is not technically considered a 'tense', but rather a 'person' as in e.g. 'third person'

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

#257

Post by esMazer »

pavlov wrote: post #25

Hey guys, I made this last week as a two-evening side project. Happy to see it posted here, thanks randall! I know the word lists aren't complete. This was the best I could do given the time constraint, the fact that I don't actually speak 19 languages... And also, after two evenings of googling dirty words, I started feeling like I'm about to acquire Tourette's in some unknown language ;) I'll update the database wi…

can you describe how you built your site, what technologies you are using etc.. thanks!

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

#258

Post by pvaldes »

notNow wrote: post #183
pvaldes wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agno is safer (same idea as in 'gnu'). "Anyo" is close phonetically to "anillo", that is a ring, but also a common source of jokes about little Frodo's sexuallity.

I think Catalan people don't have the "ñ" letter in their alphabet and they use instead this combination "ny" for that particular sound.

Well, catalan people have the ñ letter in their alphabet because they are spaniards, is just that some of them prefer to ignore this for political reasons, and they choose instead to do simple things complicated.

Both systems are a question of convenience, so no one is perfect. You can choose between the useful (and trendy in two or three spanish communities) "ny" or the older "gn" charged of historical context and showing lots of connections with other latin languages like french. Be aware also that "ny" leads easily to a "nll" sound that can be annoying, specially when is placed next to an 'i'.

This is just a personal opinion. Is perfecty ok if you think different, but if you are interested in mastering the second language with more native speakers in the world, I'll suggest to avoid the political experiments of the modern catalan and save yourself a lot of future headaches with grammar and orthography. To replace the 'ñ' by '~n' will work in most of the cases also.

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

#259

Post by Shorel »

stephengillie wrote: post #248
foldr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

In Colombia, the use of 'vos' means the person is from the region where sugarcane is cultivated, or the cities around.

That means Cali, Buenaventura and some others.

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

#260

Post by Shorel »

ch4s3 wrote: post #171
TallGuyShort wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Valgarity alert for Spanish speakers!) Indeed. "Coger" is not found, but more universal vulgarities such as "puta", "verga", "mierda" are found.

¿Donde coges el autobús? - ranges from practical to vulgar and confusing.

¿Donde coges la buseta?

Perfectly normal here, even more confusing in other places.

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