Whence and Whither in ČD Journey Planner

[LNW-GW Joint]

I was richly amused today when I was checking fares on the ČD web site (cd.cz).
The Czech language home page came up, and I know there is an English option which you can select from a drop down menu.
However on this occasion I clicked the "translate" option on my Microsoft Edge browser, and it produced the page shown in the attached screenshot.

What came up in the journey planner search box was the archaic terms "Whence" and "Whither" for departure and arrival stations respectively.
This is rather charming in its way, as those terms are perfectly appropriate to the need, although they have largely dropped out of normal use today.

Use of automatic translators on plain text is usually reasonably accurate, but if you turn translators on to things like tables or lists or technical terms you can get wildly varying results.
The problem is usually that the translator takes the literal text rather than the context in which it is set.
I assume this is a feature of the Edge AI algorithms rather than anything to do with ČD.

I'm reminded of a press report on the launch of Eurostar services in 1994, which said that all the trains would arrive at Brussels by mid-day.
What they had mis-translated manually from the French was that Eurostar trains would arrive at Brussels Midi.

 

[The exile]

No doubt another example of someone thinking they can save money by not employing someone who really speaks a foreign language (or thinking a computer can do it!)

 

[oldman]

No doubt another example of someone thinking they can save money by not employing someone who really speaks a foreign language (or thinking a computer can do it!)

But CD do provide an English-language version.

Applying the Firefox translate function to bahn.de, von and nach become by and after, which is not so good. A single by Berlin after Dresden, please.

 

[MattSGB]

But CD do provide an English-language version.

Applying the Firefox translate function to bahn.de, von and nach become by and after, which is not so good. A single by Berlin after Dresden, please.

Indeed, go to https://www.cd.cz/en/ for the pre-translated version. I've never spotted too much of an issue with translation on their site. It's a hell of a lot more coherent and understandable than some of the gibberish and inaccuracy that South Western Railway produce on their emails.

 

[DanielB]

Aplying the Firefox translate function to bahn.de, von and nach become by and after, which is not so good. A single by Berlin after Dresden, please.

That's nothing compared to what the Google Chrome translate function produces applied to ns.nl
"Van" and "Naar" become "By" and "Unpleasant", a clear example those translate functions can't handle words which have multiple meanings.

 

[AlbertBeale]

But CD do provide an English-language version.

Applying the Firefox translate function to bahn.de, von and nach become by and after, which is not so good. A single by Berlin after Dresden, please.

Translating prepositions between languages is fraught with difficulty (even for a human, let alone a machine) - there are idiomatic uses, occasions when one language uses a preposition and another doesn't, a lack of one-one correlation between prepositions, and so on.

PS - I don't consider whence and whither archaic or particularly unusual - they're a concise and precise way of saying something that can't otherwise be expressed clearly in a single word. The latter, at least, is in fairly common parlance in my experience.

 

[rf_ioliver]

Whence and whither are quite nice actually. I like that

 

[Whisky Papa]

Translating prepositions between languages is fraught with difficulty (even for a human, let alone a machine) - there are idiomatic uses, occasions when one language uses a preposition and another doesn't, a lack of one-one correlation between prepositions, and so on.

PS - I don't consider whence and whither archaic or particularly unusual - they're a concise and precise way of saying something that can't otherwise be expressed clearly in a single word. The latter, at least, is in fairly common parlance in my experience.

Indeed, and the prepositions on the Czech language version of the journey planner, 'odkud' and 'kam', are specific to verbs of motion, with various other prepositions used for 'from' and 'to' in other contexts. 'Kam odkud?' and 'Kam jdete?' would be respectively 'Where have you come from?' and 'Where are you going (to)?' in casual English, but whence and whither are accurate translations.

I have to confess the first time I saw 'whither' on the front cover of Buses magazine in my teens I had to look up its meaning. They are still not words I would regularly use even though I know their meanings, and I do honestly wonder how many native English speakers would.

 

[JRT]

I generally have no problem with reading timetables in the original language, but sometimes I have the automatic translation switched on, which leads to a literal translation of most place-names into English (rather than the local name or the English equivalent)

Pontassieve (near Firenze) appears as Pontefract

 

[ainsworth74]

What came up in the journey planner search box was the archaic terms "Whence" and "Whither" for departure and arrival stations respectively.

Ha excellent! I think all journey planners should change to using "Whence" and "Whither" immediately introduce a bit of charm to the process

Must admit it's quite remarkable that we live in an era where automated text translation is so strong that you can access all sorts of websites and documents written in other languages without needing to pay a penny for translation. It's of course by no means perfect but typically it's always possible to work out the meaning of what's been written. Sometimes I think people forget quite how remarkable it is.

 

[nwales58]

Ahem. We *are* paying for translation in the percentage Google take from advertising charges that we all pay for by buying anything from a firm that advertises on the internet.

My recent favourite was Bing translate on HZPP’s disruption pages. Croatians still travel on chariots apparently.

 

[rvdborgt]

My recent favourite was Bing translate on HZPP’s disruption pages. Croatians still travel on chariots apparently.

LOL. At least it's a change from "flights"...

 

[mad_rich]

I'm reminded of a press report on the launch of Eurostar services in 1994, which said that all the trains would arrive at Brussels by mid-day.
What they had mis-translated manually from the French was that Eurostar trains would arrive at Brussels Midi.

That reminds me of the (probably apocryphal) story of an American airliner flying into Doha, and upon speaking to ATC was told ‘cleared to land runway 16L, inshallah’, to which he replied ‘err, negative, we are approaching runway 16L, Hamad International’.

 

[Watershed]

The "To" field in Entur's journey planner is Google Translated as "Two"

 

[trebor79]

Whence and whither are quite nice actually. I like that

Possibly the original Czech is a rather formal tone?
I had a work colleague who's parents were Polish and hence he spoke fluent Polish. On a work trip to Poland whilst he was able to converse fleunty there were a lot of wry smiles and giggles. Turns out he spoke an old-fashioned and rather formal Polish, so it was akin to someone speaking late Victorian/Edwardian English. I could well imagine he could have been dashing things such as whence and either.

 

[rf_ioliver]

Possibly the original Czech is a rather formal tone?
I had a work colleague who's parents were Polish and hence he spoke fluent Polish. On a work trip to Poland whilst he was able to converse fleunty there were a lot of wry smiles and giggles. Turns out he spoke an old-fashioned and rather formal Polish, so it was akin to someone speaking late Victorian/Edwardian English. I could well imagine he could have been dashing things such as whence and either.

I'm not familiar with Czech prepositions, but it is possible that the automatic translations has defaulted to some "formal" mode in lieu of additional context information.

I have a similar story with Finnish Swedish, which when used in Sweden immediately marks you out as a Finn...mainly because it sounds like 1950s Swedish with Finnish pronunciation. Don't get me started on the joys of literary Welsh vs colloquial Welsh, or two separate languages as far as I am concerned

 

[Whisky Papa]

Possibly the original Czech is a rather formal tone?
I had a work colleague who's parents were Polish and hence he spoke fluent Polish. On a work trip to Poland whilst he was able to converse fleunty there were a lot of wry smiles and giggles. Turns out he spoke an old-fashioned and rather formal Polish, so it was akin to someone speaking late Victorian/Edwardian English. I could well imagine he could have been dashing things such as whence and either.

'Standard Czech' is indeed the formal version that would be expected on such a website, but I'm not sure that any 'Common Czech' variant would have used different prepositions to the ones being translated by Microsoft Edge as 'whence' and 'whither.' The course I've been doing included some 'Common Czech' and the differences seemed to be mostly being less fussy about getting the correct endings to match genders.