This is one of my personal favorite bits of Schadenfreude in the world.

This photo was taken by Karen Reshkin at the 2016 Milwaukee Irish Fest, and depicts a somewhat Irish-inspired riff on the standard Blue Lives Matter fascist fashion chic. Except no one explained to this idiot cop how translations work, especially when it comes to idioms.

A blogger named the Geeky Gaeilgeoir breaks this hilariously ironic failure with eloquent detail, and a much firmer grasp of the Irish language than I have. But essentially, this mean translated individual word of "Blue Lives Matter" without considering context or grammar. "Gorm" is indeed "blue." But "chónaí" means "lives" with a short "i," as in, "I live here." And "ábhar" means "matter," yes, but in the noun form — like a subject matter, or a material, as opposed to the verb of "mattering."

The syntax is all wrong, too. And that helps with the absurdity. Essentially, this shirt doesn't say anything.

But the real chef-kiss moment is with the word "Blue." "Gorm" is, technically, correct…in a certain context:

When color is used to describe a person in Irish, it typically refers to hair color. For example An bhean rua: The red-haired woman.

There are exceptions, of course: For example, Na fir bhuí (“The orange/yellow men”) is used to refer to members of the Orange Order because of the color of their sashes. But “blue/gorm” would not be used to refer to police officers as a group. That’s an American thing.

(UPDATE: she had it fixed, but apparently the new version is even worse.)

Brian Ashcraft:

Grande posted a photo of her tattoo. In Japanese, it reads, 七輪 (shichirin). You can see the pic photo (via Grande’s official Japanese Twitter), which has since been deleted from her Instagram. The kanji character 七 means “seven,” while 輪 means “hoop,” “circle,” “ring,” or “wheel.” However, when you put them together, the meaning is different! 七輪 (shichirin) is a “small charcoal grill” and not “seven rings,” which is written differently in Japanese.

The mistake could have been avoided had she googled her new tat:

Read the rest

Feed 19 repetitions of the word "dog" to Google Translate and ask it for a Maori conversion and you get this: "Doomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve. We are experiencing characters and a dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus' return." Read the rest

On the Tonight Show, actor Idris Elba and host Jimmy Fallon took turns singing songs karaoke-style with lyrics humorously mangled by Google Translate.

To start, Elba belted out Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back," or "The Baby Escaped" after being run through translation.

"I love large saplings that is the truth. A few of your siblings were here. That woman showed up and has small hips with a sleeve around your head."

Jimmy then continued the fun with Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" AKA, "Meet My Kids."

For the final song, they sang a duet for "I'll Place Kindness on You," the Boyz II Men song formerly known as "I'll Make Love to You."

"Shut your face, pray for dreams."