As anyone who has sat through grammar lessons can attest, language is a strange and amorphous beast, a spinner of expression that only the native speaker can truly understand, albeit not necessarily be able to explain to others.
A prime example of artificial intelligence going awry is the Google Maps application. While the English version is more or less accurate, the Tamil translations of place names are an inadvertent source of humour and outright ridicule.
City Union Bank, which is mentioned with the acronym CUB on Google Maps, is translated as ‘Kuttiyin Vangi’ (animal cub’s bank). It’s not just a mix-up of acronyms, though. Good Shepherd Hr. Sec. School (Hr. and Sec. being abbreviations of higher and secondary respectively), is translated as ‘Good Shepherd Mani Nodi Palli’. The Hr. and Sec. have become ‘hour’ and ‘second’ in their Tamil version.
Yet another word that Google Maps likes to have fun with is ‘Mess’. Many eateries in Tamil Nadu describe themselves as a ‘mess’, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as ‘a building or room providing meals and recreational facilities for members of the armed forces’.
In its Tamil context, the Mess is perhaps on a par with the ‘military hotel’ of yore. But Google Maps prefers to use the same dictionary to pluck out yet another meaning for the same word, going for ‘A situation that is confused and full of problems’.
So Nellai Mess becomes ‘Nellai Alangolam’ and Andhra Mess becomes ‘Andhra Alangolam’.
Literary confusion assumes absurd dimensions when words are used out of context, and nowhere is this more visible than in Akila Flats, indicating the name of an apartment block in KK Nagar. In the Tamil Google Map, the place is marked as ‘Agila Manai’, which loosely translates to ‘Universal Plains’.
“There is no regard for linguistic accuracy in the Tamil version of Google Maps,” says I Lenin Tamilkovan, director, Anna Planetarium and Science Centre, Tiruchi. He has been observing the app’s crazy translation skills for some time, and has saved screen grabs of over 1,000 examples of the most glaring mistakes, some of which have been used in this article.
“The translation is arbitrary, with words being picked randomly. The PUS (Panchayat Union School) is explained as ‘Seezh Palli’, where the acronym is replaced by the Tamil word for ‘pus’ that comes from a wound. ‘White Cross’ becomes ‘Vellai Kurukku’ … there are many such examples,” he adds. Google Maps users have been trying to iron out the problem through online forums. But clearly, as automation of the knowledge industry shows, a little learning is a dangerous thing.
