.jpg)
Talking About Suckbaby Room, ‘Ayam Jantan Ulang Alik’ and All Eggs Are Gone Except for the Towkay’s.
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright February 2022
Take a break from local politics and mudslinging amongst politicians that is getting louder by the day as we get closer to a state election in Johor.
Let’s laugh a little.
I saw a sign on Facebook uploaded by some anonymous contributor. It says, “Buy one dick free one chicken”.
It’s probably a printing error. You know full well it’s just impossible to get deals like that anywhere in town. Besides who would want a chicken to go with a dick.
But such errors attract attention and perhaps promote sales.
Then a few pages later, I saw another upload from Google translate for shuttle cock in Bahasa as”Zakar ulang alik”. I was sure this was not a simple human error. Zakar is penis in Bahasa and certainly has no relationship to the chicken feathers stuck on a piece of cork hit by badminton players back and forth over a net.
I wanted to verify that this was not a prank and keyed in on Google translate but this time it popped up a different answer, “ayam jantan ulang alik”. Now it’s a cockerel that’s shuttling back and forth and not a male sex organ.
If you had used Google translate for making your signboard for the public it would be hilarious just as in the case of a nursing room at an arrival hall of an international airport somewhere in the country. In Bahasa it was called “Ruang Menyusui Bayi” but the English translation below read “Give Suckbaby Room”.
I knew it was a machine error that was created by poor human input. So, I toyed with Google translate wanting to figure out how a copywriter ended with Suckbaby Room.
The closest I got out of Google was when I keyed in “Ruang Mengisap Bayi” and instantly translated it as “baby sucking room”. But if I keyed in ruang bagi mengisap bayi the machine automatically printed out “space for sucking babies”.
However when I keyed in “Ruang bagi bayi mengisap susu” the machine-translated it as space for babies to suckle. But I still could not figure out how he got “Give Suckbaby Room”.
Anyway, the best laugh for me was during the recent shortage of eggs in the country around the Chinese New Year holidays when a sign appeared informing customers “Telor habis tinggal towkay punya saja”. So I keyed the words on Google machine translator and it responded “the eggs are gone only the towkay has it.”
Now you know how the administration sometimes creates gaffes, that unintentional acts which caused untold embarrassment to the entire country when such a blunder happened to be on a signboard at an international arrivals hall. More of that in our next column.
Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
Register at headliner.newswav.com to become one of our content writers now!
Newswav is solely an aggregation platform and hosts the content. The views expressed and content above including media (pictures, videos, etc) were provided by the author. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact Newswav.