The word "robot" is a Czech invention.

And Czech translation agencies do have a less than stellar reputation.

They should stick to pornstars and beer, they're good at that.

Well, time for some Staropramen and a chat with Mrs. Palm and her five lovely daughters.

Perhaps MediaDefender should approach the Czech Olympic Comittee and ask to use their method of encryption for securing their communications

And here was me thinking you were talking about El Regs infallible accuracy of the English language.

"We don't know quite what is going on down at the Czech Olympic Committee"

sounds just like the manual of my 74 Toyota.

"And here was me thinking you were talking about El Regs infallible accuracy of the English language."

El Reg's sentence was fine. Yours, however, missed an apostrophe.

:P

Not to worry, other parts of the website, such as the bits cribbed from Wikipedia (e.g. descriptions of gymnastics events), do parse a little more easily than that history page...

Utilization of the Babelfish with purposeful to Olympic bid? Low-grade attribute pertaining of official deliberative assembly holding responsibility towards Czech Olympiad. Much.

This style looks familiar. I think I've seen it, perhaps here:

INSTRUCTIONS: For results that can be the finest, it is our advising that: NEVER to hold these buttons two times!! Except the battery. Next Taking the (something) earth section may cause a large occurrence! However. If this is not a trouble, such rotation is a very maintainence action, as a kindly (something) viewpoint from Drawing B.

What's so funny? This sounds exactly like a typical conversation between my grandparents and their non Czech neighbors, who also spoke broken Italianish or Polackish or Frogish in NYC.

Just to defend our European friends and probably your ancestors; most speak two or three other European languages. How many does the average American or Brit speak? My Grandmother spoke five languages fluently besides Czech (unfortunately English was not one of them) - French (frog croaking), German/Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and Ukranian, after a Masters degree from Prague University in Literature, something no so uncommon for a big percentage of Czechs and Czech women in the first decade of the 1900's.

Ps, The poster is CORRECT. The Czechs DID invent the term ROBOT and NO this does not at all sound like a Babelfish translation.

My great great grandfather was the supreme 'peep at peas' champion in 1932. The previous year he was the 'glancing at gherkins' champion. Quite why these events were dropped I will never know!

The majority of people in the country (or at least in Prague) don't actually WANT the Olympics there, knowing that it's a risky project with uncertain ROI, requiring the construction of a lot of infrastructure and its subsequent abandonment (since it's highly unlikely to find use for the facilities once the games are over), not to mention the death of the olympic ideal. But never mind that, the politicians want it, perhaps to show the rest of us how stupid we are for failing to see the "prestige" of such an event.

Your hovercraft is full of eels. My nipples explode with delight!

One of the culinary delights we were offered on a recent cycling event in France was:

"'Potato Vapour and Pieces of Salmon small boat"

(Mind boggles on both pistons)

Someone has taken it word for word from a Czech>English dictionary. This is what happens when you don't understand context and grammar.

And not all us Brits can only speak English (and a poor version at that). Some of us also understand Franglais.. (improvise French accent before attempting) "Dooo yoooo 'ave ze rezervazyion?" or the old favourite "Dooo yooo parlais ze English?".

As far as I know, that's not the official site. Http://www.prahaolympijska.cz/ is. With a much different, better, English. Why did the authorities not use a more international URL is beyond me, though. Or why did someone start that bastard of a page mentioned in the article.

the official site of Czech olympic comittee is here http://web.olympic.cz/

Sounds like you've fallen for the Wikipedia trap all over again...

"The majority of people in the country (or at least in Prague) don't actually WANT the Olympics there, knowing that it's a risky project with uncertain ROI, "

That sounds like +every+ country that "wants" to host a major event. For example, most South Africans are dreading the 2010 Soccer World Cup. And with us, it's not that the politicians think we're failing to see appreciate the "prestige", it's more like it's yet another opportunity for them to make obscene amounts of money through graft and corruption.

Funny you should mention that. What would be really embarassing is if the same situation occurred and the country actually DID win the Olympic bid. Oh wait, that's just happened in London..

are you sure he was not employed to draft up the historical report ;-)

Seems to me this should be passed to AManFromMars for translation. Sorry to AMFM if I spelled our name wrong, I can't remember the exact CaPiTaliSatioN in your name.

Are you sure this is supposed to be an official presentation? It looks more like a blog, the domain is registered to an individual (see whois), and it doesn't even display the COC logo. There is at least one official resource, with considerably higher legibility, at http://www.olympiada.cz.mdm.etn.cz/olymp/jnp/en/home/index.html . (I personally don't like how they use the word "Czech" as a noun, but this is a highly controversial topic in its own right...)

...but that's not the official website.

The official website is here (English version):

http://www.prahaolympijska.cz/olymp/jnp/en/home/index.html

You mean half of those spam emails we got with obscure phrases were actually press releases from this lot?

> and it doesn't even display the COC

And this is where we came in, with references to the Czech porn industry

"Your hovercraft is full of eels. My nipples explode with delight!"

Elsewhere, the site says that the Czech olympic authorities plan to craunch a marmoset at the opening ceremony. Nasty.

At least the "pouched marmoset" makes a better logo/mascot than the British one.

http://www.olympicprague.net/olympic-mascot/

I wonder if they mean poached marmoset. Yum.

How ironic! And tomorrow is the annual European Day of Languages:

http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/awareness/day_en.html

And all of this fascination and countless hours vainly invested in machine translation to very little avail, because mainly unilingual linguaphobes cannot bring themselves to investigate, or even inform themselves properly, about an alternative which time and time again proves that it functions perfectly adequately in real-life situations, and whose basic grammar can be grasped by most people after only a few hours study. I'm talking of course about 'universal bilingualism' and the inter-language Esperanto:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto

http://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/

http://lingvo.org/xx/2/3

How unfortunate that the late great Stanley Unwin could not have made use of what might, for him, have been an automated scriptwriter.

Andus you mighty questional ask the IT anglipode?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=duOhkSwMjKg

OK, I don't care if its real or fake, it's still damn funny, REGARDLESS OF IT ANGLE