[Taxacom] Not news: Latin scholarship statistically zero

[Geoff Read]

Now that we're all on the alert thanks to Curtis, here's another Latin
Google-ism.

'Naturae Curiosorum' translates to English only as 'Missouri', WITH NO
ALTERNATIVES, when it probably is something like 'Curious as to Nature' in
English.  Also happens with Latin to French or German.

Missouri state is named after the Indian Tribe living there.  No obvious
connection with the Latin phrase.  Weird.

I think the connection Google oddly made might come from that a journal
with those 2 words in the title, Academia Caesarea Leopoldino-Carolina
Naturae Curiosorum, was digitised by, guess who, MISSOURI Botanical
Garden.

Tenuous to say the least.

Geoff


On Sun, April 7, 2013 7:50 am, Curtis Clark wrote:
[snip]
> It's not surprising that people use Google Translate to find out Latin;
> I use it for other languages all the time. And it's not surprising that
> Google Translate gives different meanings for different inflections of a
> word, since it equivalences phrases from known translations rather than
> translating words grammatically; that's why it does a better job than
> most other automatic translation programs.
>
> And so we get "macrofasciculumque". The same Google that gives the
> less-than-useful translation enabled me to research all this in just a
> few minutes. So I'm not exactly complaining.