What do you call the iPad in Arabic?
Google finds another way to insult Apple
What do you call the iPad in Arabic? Sorry, can't help you there, but then neither can Google Translate, which transliterates whatever the iPad is called in Arabic into the English "Aye Bad".
As mistranslations (of this BBC report) go, this is particularly serendipitous, confirming, at a nadir between the two companies, that Google's sole purpose on this planet is to do evil to Apple and to annoy the hell out of Steve Jobs. Although not necessarily in that order.
Google's magic algorithms will soon get to work, and the Aye Bad, or Moses Tablet as it is more correctly known, will be as if it never was. Except for this little fanfare to remind us all:
Who could argue with this?
Hats off to Reg reader Emrys for the tip. Emrys is particularly charmed by Google Translate's headline for the Aye Bad specification box, which we also capture for posterity.
Bootnote
Apple is not an Arabic loanword. But Orange is. As is Lime. And Apricot.
COMMENTS
Not really intentional
Not sure whether the writer knows arabic or not, but in arabic, there is no letter that could make the "P" sound so for foreign products that use the letter P, they will replace it with "B" (the closest pronunciation of the P sound that they could come up with). As an example, in the arab world, people call PEPSI as "BEBSI". So for "iPad" case, for the non-english speaking arabs, they will pronounce it as iBad (or Aye Bad). Not really google's fault IMHO. Also, since google relies on the masses to provide better translations for its translation service, the translation for the word Apple, (the arabic text is pronounced as "Able"), has been fixed to "Apple". Since "iPad" was newly created by Apple, nobody had suggested a better translation of it from arabic to english so google is just pronouncing the word the way it was written in arabic.
My chance to use the "Grammar Nazi" icon.
Loanwords are foreign words embedded in a language with only the spelling and/or pronunciation adjusted, like, say, bungalow. But none of the fruit you cite come directly from the Arabic. Apricot and lime are--at a stretch--loaned, loan words, but orange has a far richer etymology, and the pedant in me wouldn't describe any of them as loanwords, except for the purpose of snappy journalism--
Oh, I see. Carry on as you were...
no "P" in arabic
That's because there is no letter equivalent of "P" in arabic...all P's are replaced by "B"s. This sometimes helps because calling someone a "brat" not too bad, and saying he is a "Brick" again seems almost complimentary...
