Running mate Ryan handsome young suction gold

Machine-translating the official Chinese translation of the New York Times back into English results in curious delights.

• [MonkeyBoy]

  This post is rather useless without anyway to determine the Chinese characters that translated as “handsome young suction gold”.

  (The links go the current page of the Chinese NYT which doesn’t contain the story)

  • [xiagang]

    Monkey Boy: The current version of this article (by Nate Silver on 15 August) is here: 
    http://cn.nytimes.com/article/world/2012/08/15/c15campaign/

    The “suction gold” translation comes from this sentence: “他也会是筹款的吸金利器，不仅对罗姆尼如此，很可能对奥巴马来说也一样.” 

    For non-Chinese readers, the “suction gold” translation is derived from these characters: 吸金 (xi and jin). Xi means absorb or attract (suck in) and jin means gold or money.

    Google translate for Chinese should never be relied upon for anything remotely important. But it’s good to get the gist of things. 

    • [MonkeyBoy]

      Thanks. That story is a translation of August 11, 2012, A Risky Rationale Behind Romney’s Choice of Ryan

      NYT: “He should also be a fund-raising magnet — for Mr. Romney, and probably also for Mr. Obama.”
      CNYT:  他也会是筹款的吸金利器，不仅对罗姆尼如此，很可能对奥巴马来说也一样。
      google:  “He also is a fund-raising tool for suction gold not only Romney so is likely to Obama, too.”
      a better literal  translation from Chinese would be:”He also is a fund-raising tool, a gold attractor,  not only for Romney but likely for Obama, too.”

• [Boundegar]

  Porn title.

• [Navin_Johnson]

  “Strong violence machine”

  • [z7q2]

    Band name, album title, or indy record shop genre section?

    • [Navin_Johnson]

      Lost 1992 Soundgarden lp.

• [failquail]

  For more translation giggles :D
  http://translationparty.com

  put in a phrase and it’ll translate from english to japanese and back repeatedly :)
  http://translationparty.com/#10414794