Lithuanian Google

Anita Juškevičienė

Almost everyone, who is searching for some information, use “Google” searching system. I do not avoid using this system too. My interest in “Google” has stimulated me to broad my knowledge about it. For this reason I have read the article about “Google” in “Kompiuterija” (No.10) magazine. I would like to emphasize, that the “Google” system is translated to many different languages. However, Lithuanian translation has dis appointed me.

     Let’s have a look at the chapter “Grupės”. It contains not many words, but unfortunately, we can find a lot of  mistakes there. Larger part of mistakes is spelling or grammatical errors (e. g. Groupės, sarašus). Translator probably can’t differentiate proper and appellative names (Grupės, Universitetai), makes stylistic mistakes (they are marked with wiggly line). We can notice a number of impolite appeals to internet user (e. g.Prisijunk instead of Prisijunkite), etc. Some stylistic errors turns into logical mistakes, e. g. the statement about reading recieved messages in original text become as a statement about his own messages. Furthermore, e-mail message in Lithuanian is “laiškas”, not “žinutė”..

    We can see many mistakes in other “Google” chapters as well. The user may come to an opinion, that the translator was not Lithuanian, but a foreigner, who has some knowledge of Lithuanian language. “Google” is an open source program. For this reason, Lithuanian open source fans could give a hand for this system development – translation will not make a shame on authors of this program, and internet users will not be confused.

Translated from Lithuanian Kompiuterija 2006, Nr. 11, p.37    

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