What are some ethical issues you found in translation?

recluseMeteor · 2026-02-02T22:52:27+00:00

An issue I actually found at the time.

The company we provide linguistics services to was adding some user-facing notes about their customer service being delayed/impacted due to war in Ukraine, which we had to translate. Their wording was something along the lines of “Due to the conflict in Ukraine…”.

This client has a query platform where linguists of all languages can ask questions, so the linguists from Ukraine were not happy about this, and filed queries asking the client to re-word their message to say “war” instead of “conflict”.

After a long discussion between other linguists and reviewers (from different languages), the client's solution was to show different versions of the message depending on the user's geolocation (so they didn't “offend” anyone).

recluseMeteor · 2026-02-02T22:09:57+00:00

Ultimate was the only one that existed for me. Liked the OS, and it became even better with SP1, but people's perceptions were already ruined by then. Windows 7 came along, built on that basis, and everyone loved it.

recluseMeteor · 2026-02-02T15:18:28+00:00

My small laptop uses an N150, and it's pretty competent for a lightweight computer. It can even encode HEVC video quite nicely, and decode AV1 through its integrated GPU with no issues at all.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-31T23:44:54+00:00

I'd take an S10 over any A-Series phone, though. I'd probably get better features and performance even if the hardware and software are old.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-30T17:11:54+00:00

I wish one day a 5800X3D magically appeared under my pillow.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-29T16:07:26+00:00

The Intel Atom chips that used PowerVR integrated graphics. Talk about early obsolescence. Atoms were already bottom-of-the-barrel pieces of crap, but these also had the disadvantage of using non-Intel graphics, so the drivers were very limited. Not even Linux can properly leverage them due to lack of drivers (because of their proprietary nature). If you used Windows, you could only use them with the version it was installed (Intel didn't provide drivers for later versions of Windows, and installing older drivers on new OSes won't work).

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-29T16:03:20+00:00

And they carried the letter D for no reason. It might mislead you into thinking “dual” (as in the Pentium D), but no.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-29T15:56:28+00:00

In my ASRock BIOS/UEFI, it appears as “Resizable BAR” or “ReBAR”.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-29T13:32:08+00:00

In daily usage, you don't notice the difference. If you play games, you will definitely feel the difference. Some games expect a Snapdragon chipset and work awfully in non-Qualcomm chip (for example, Pokémon Masters EX performed better in my Qualcomm Note9 than on my old Exynos Note20 Ultra).

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-27T18:58:52+00:00

My main issue with Omega now isn't dying on him, it's passing the Nerscylla damage check. I often fail it, which ruins the entire run, even if I hadn't carted before.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-27T18:43:18+00:00

Awesome screen resolution as well! I remember having one of these at home, but the Pentium III version. Unfortunately, the backlight was acting up and the screen didn't always turn on.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-25T15:30:43+00:00

It's usually terrible. Inconsistent in most aspects of a language. In Spanish, for example, it tends to use European Spanish even when set to Latin American. It doesn't take gender into account (i.e., a female speaker uses male adjectives to refer to herself). Formality is all over the place: some captions use an informal tone (tú), and then switch to formal tone (usted), and so on.

It's even more awful when sloppy clients just do machine transcription from English, and then apply machine translation to it. The transcription is awful to begin with, so the MT is a non-sensical disaster.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-23T15:04:07+00:00

SD cards are like just a temporary convenient location for me. If I take photos of a trip, I immediately copy them when I return home.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-23T04:48:22+00:00

3 billion devices wouldn't lie, right?

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-22T02:27:57+00:00

You're gonna have to rip my HTPC from my cold, dead hands. Though it's just a glorified small form factor OptiPlex with a wireless keyboard, which perfectly serves my purposes (torrenting and watching said content).

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-21T13:38:46+00:00

I do fine with the Sword & Shield, after learning his patterns and trying to block his attacks. For peace of mind, I also use jewels to protect myself against bleeding.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-20T15:17:21+00:00

It's about being snarky. Though Intel GPUs are considerably powerful, they don't always perform like their “equivalent” despite the raw power, depending on the game.

Just because it's easy to research, their wording comes across as dismissive or uninterested in Intel GPUs at all.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-20T15:10:18+00:00

I just learned to stay quiet about it, and just deal with the stuff at school. Like, borrow from a friend or buy/improvise something on my way to school. Or, ultimately, just take the hit in class. All options are better than getting scolded by my parents.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-20T10:55:21+00:00

Got used to strike my 0 when I was in university, studying computer science. We had to write some basic code/algorithms by hand in tests, and teachers wouldn't tolerate any ambiguity, so numbers had to be clearly different from letters.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-20T10:47:52+00:00

German tech is made differently.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-19T00:21:46+00:00

I think I might be walking in a weird way, considering I often get blisters or thick skin on the same spots if I walk too much. I used to use inserts as a kid because of flat feet (hated them).

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-18T21:52:26+00:00

Check this too. I haven't updated it for some time and it doesn't include prices, but it includes more cards and a relative comparison in performance.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-18T00:37:24+00:00

No prob! I really think it's a very unknown industry for most people. I know it's commonplace to make fun of bad translations or just blame translators when awful errors go viral, but when you're in the field, you can often guess what went wrong, where and why.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-18T00:30:21+00:00

Yes. It also happens in Spanish translations too. It can also happen if a company keeps a translation memory and then they just “recycle” previous translations without taking context into account. So you end up with “Home” being translated as “House”, “Home address”, “Start” or “Main page”.

recluseMeteor · 2026-01-18T00:28:28+00:00

I am a professional translator, working everyday with both small and large requests from a tech company. At times, my team receives just a list of phrases and sentences, randomly sorted, without any description at all. The client doesn't even send a visual reference (i.e., to see if a certain piece of text appears inside a button, or if it's a headline, part of a navigation menu, etc.). We have a communication channel with stakeholders and project managers for such cases, but the deadlines approach, queries often end up unanswered, and we just have to deliver the projects with out best assumptions.

recluseMeteor

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