Have you scrolled to the end of the emoji keyboard, looking for those peskily faraway hearts, and accidentally sent a mysterious “NG”? Asked a friend in Japan if they want to go out for hibachi and been met with a blank stare? As a language shifts and evolves, it’s wont to take absurd and arbitrary twists and turns. (Consider that inflammable means flammable, or that peruse means both to examine in close detail and browse superficially.) But when two languages get together, things can get extra weird.
On March 26, the Oxford English Dictionary, the historical dictionary widely considered as the definitive record of the English language, added 23 Japanese borrowings to its 500,000 words and phrases. Most were culture-related nouns, especially in food (“tonkotsu,” “onigiri”), along with “kintsugi,” “omotenashi” and “washi tape.”
“Hibachi” got an update as well. Though it was first added in 1933 as a charcoal brazier for warming hands or boiling water for tea, North Americans have been using it for just as long to mean something else. In English, the word can refer to a small portable barbecue, as well as to restaurants where someone cooks on a hot plate surrounded by diners (what’s called “teppanyaki” in Japan), as popularized by New York’s Benihana, which features a goofy chef who does tricks, including tossing food directly into people’s mouths.
Oregon is becoming increasingly diverse, and for those of us who inform the public that sometimes means translating important information into languages other than English.
And that in turn means sometimes things get lost in translation. Two decades ago, The Oregonian columnist Margie Boulé wrote a memorable column about erroneous Oregon Department of Transportation signs.
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Entertainment
By Miranda Siwak
Taylor SwiftGotham/GC Images/Getty Images
The chairman of the Tortured Poets Department, better known as Taylor Swift, has revealed exactly how fans should listen to her 11th studio album.
In a social message shared via the official department intern (a.k.a. Taylor Nation’s X page), the official “board meeting agenda” for Friday, April 19 at midnight details the event’s purpose, discussion topics and essentials to bring along to any listening parties.
“The intern will call the meeting to order and department members will stream the chairman’s manuscript,” the message reads, referring to Swift’s LP The Tortured Poets Department. “Sign into your streaming platform of choice and press play simultaneously so all members can review the evidence together. Relaxed poets, consult your tortured muse before attending.”
While pondering on the tracks — which are listed on the agenda as “12 a.m. discussion topics” — Swift, 34, also advises what fans should have handy, including a listening device, a “department-issued uniform,” talismans, charms and snacks (it will be late at night, after all) and a dictionary.
With Taylor Nation’s agenda proclaiming that a dictionary will be necessary to appreciate TTPD, fans have been theorizing how that corresponds to the record’s lyrics.
From the desk of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT intern, the #TTPDBoardMeeting agenda. 📜🤍
See you tonight. https://t.co/PTWtDQP87V pic.twitter.com/1mTH0OMhdk
— Taylor Nation (@taylornation13) April 18, 2024
“I’m scared too coz apparently I’m going to need a dictionary as [an] international fan,” one social media user wrote via X. “I thought my English was higher, I’m ready with a Cambridge dictionary.”
Another added, “Imma need to buy a dictionary and thesaurus before this album drop. Thanks Taylor Alison Swift.”
Swift is well-known for her crafty lyrics, often featuring fancy phrases and uncommon terms in songs. After the November 2023 drop of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Swifties ran to their dictionaries to look up “surmise” after it was briefly mentioned in “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version).”
“Only Taylor Swift could rhyme blue eyes with surmise,” an X user wrote at the time. “She probably knows how to rhyme the word orange too.”
A separate fan quipped, “I can’t believe Taylor Swift invented the word ‘surmise.’”
It’s not only Swifties who know that the pop star is an intelligent mastermind, but her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, gets it too.
“I’ve never been a man of words,” Kelce, 34, gushed to WSJ. Magazine in a profile published in November 2023. “Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor is, has been f—ing mind-blowing. I’m learning every day.
Kelce, who has been dating Swift since summer 2023, has already heard TTPD before the official release day. “I have heard some of it, yes, and it is unbelievable,” he said at a February press conference for Super Bowl LVIII. “I can’t wait for her to shake up the world when it finally drops.”
The Tortured Poets Department will be released on Friday, April 19.
The 18th-century resolution states that the lawmakers “highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion, as well as the interest of the progress of arts in this country.” It further states that the lawmakers “recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.”
The translation, which is a version of the Protestant King James Version of the Bible, is not approved by the Vatican for Catholics. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists approved translations of the Bible on its website.
Tennessee’s legislation that names the Aitken Bible as an official state book notes that the state is home to “the largest publisher of authentic reproductions of the Aitken Bible,” which is the Aitken Bible Historical Foundation. It adds that Tennessee is home to “three of the five privately owned original first American Bibles remaining in the world today.”
The legislation received strong support from Republicans in the Tennessee House and Senate, who hold strong supermajorities in both chambers. The bill faced opposition from most Democrats but received one Democratic vote in the House.
Some of the other historic books designated as official state books in this legislation included President George Washington’s “Farewell Address” and “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville. The bill also recognized the 1977 book “Roots” by Alex Haley, which discusses slavery in the United States, and the 2016 book “Coat of Many Colors” by the Tennessee-born country singer Dolly Parton.
Tennessee lawmakers also passed a bill that would recognize November as “Christian Heritage Month.” The legislation was sent to Lee, but the governor has not yet taken any action on it.
As funny as it was when the AI Pin utterly failed at translating Korean and Japanese, it also broke my heart.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Of all the things the Humane AI Pin promised, I was most intrigued by translation. In a demo, a man speaks to Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri in Spanish. The AI Pin automatically translates it to English. Chaudhri replies in English. Again, the AI Pin translates his words back into Spanish. There are notable pauses when the AI is processing, but it’s a powerful concept. Unlike with Google Translate, there was solid eye contact between both people. The AI voice sounded more natural and less robotic. And crucially, there were no screens. The language barrier was still there, but it was much more permeable.
That’s not what happened when I tried it myself.
I spoke some simple phrases in Japanese and Korean. Instead of translating, the AI Pin spewed gibberish back at me. I asked my colleague David Pierce, who reviewed the damn thing, if I was doing something wrong. I wasn’t. It just didn’t work.
The whole experience was funny. It felt like vindication for the blood, sweat, and tears I poured into two decades of foreign language study. But when I rewatched Humane’s translation demo, my heart broke. I found myself wishing I had something like this when my parents were dying.
Living in an immigrant, multilingual family will open your eyes to all the ways humans can misunderstand each other. My story isn’t unique, but I grew up unable to communicate in my family’s “default language.” I was forbidden from speaking Korean as a child. My parents were fluent in spoken and written English, but their accents often left them feeling unwelcome in America. They didn’t want that for me, and so I grew up with perfect, unaccented English. I could understand Korean and, as a small child, could speak some. But eventually, I lost that ability.
I became the family Chewbacca. Family would speak to me in Korean, I’d reply back in English — and vice versa. Later, I started learning Japanese because that’s what public school offered and my grandparents were fluent. Eventually, my family became adept at speaking a pidgin of English, Korean, and Japanese.
This arrangement was less than ideal but workable. That is until both of my parents were diagnosed with incurable, degenerative neurological diseases. My father had Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. My mom had bulbar amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Their English, a language they studied for decades, evaporated.
It made everything twice as complicated. I shared caretaking duties with non-English speaking relatives. Doctor visits — both here and in Korea — had to be bilingual, which often meant appointments were longer, more stressful, expensive, and full of misunderstandings. Oftentimes, I’d want to connect with my stepmom or aunt, both to coordinate care and vent about things only we could understand. None of us could go beyond “I’m sad,” “I come Monday, you go Tuesday,” or “I’m sorry.” We struggled alone, together.
If the Humane AI Pin’s translation features worked as demoed, how much grief and loneliness might have been spared? Would our burden have felt even a smidge lighter? I’ve kept rerunning those fantasies in my head since rewatching the demo. And I know that, for the foreseeable future, it’ll stay a fantasy.
Real-time translation is so hard for so many reasons. Some may be beyond Humane’s current ability to fix.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Better versions of Humane’s translation tech already exist. Google Translate requires screens, but it’s a widely known tool that can act as a digital interpreter. Even so, Google Translate still struggles to keep up with all the ways language evolves. It now knows that “ㅋㅋ” is how Koreans text lol, but it completely fumbles with the Japanese idiom tsutsumotase. What you get is a direct but incorrect translation of the characters, along with an approximate definition. (The word refers to a specific type of badger game where a man and woman team up to financially extort another man.) Not to mention, English may be the lingua franca that unites tech, but some languages are easier to translate than others. It could very well be that Humane opted for Spanish and French demos because they’re much more closely related to English. Perhaps it simply didn’t have the same resources to actually build out all the languages of the world — and the myriad permutations that would entail.
Tsutsumotase doesn’t mean beauty bureau. Confidence person gets close to the meaning, but it lacks the actual nuance of the phrase.
Screenshot: Victoria Song / The Verge
But those are the finer details of mastery and fluency. You need much less to “survive” in another language. That’s where Google Translate excels. It’s handy when you’re traveling and need basic help, like directions or ordering food. But life is lived in moments more complicated than simple transactions with strangers. When I decided to pull off my mom’s oxygen mask — the only machine keeping her alive — I used my crappy pidgin to tell my family it was time to say goodbye. I could’ve never pulled out Google Translate for that. We all grieved once my mom passed, peacefully, in her living room. My limited Korean just meant I couldn’t partake in much of the communal comfort. Would I have really tapped a pin in such a heavy moment to understand what my aunt was wailing when I knew the why?
Translation is an art, and art is something AI often gets wrong. It’s not enough to spit out a direct meaning. For high-context languages like Japanese and Korean, you also have to be able to translate what isn’t said — like tone and relationships between speakers — to really understand what’s being conveyed. If a Korean person asks you your age, they’re not being rude. It literally determines how they should speak to you. In Japanese, the word daijoubu can mean “That’s okay,” “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” “Yes,” “No, thank you,” “Everything’s going to be okay,” and “Don’t worry” depending on how it’s said. (See: this ball of rice explaining it.) It’s confusing enough for humans to get it right — how are AI translation gadgets trained by imperfect humans supposed to?
Even so, I can’t help but long for the future Humane demoed. I can study Japanese and Korean for the rest of my life — and I will — but there’ll always be gaps. I have countless memories of times when I forgot how to speak my second and third languages. Times when I was in physical pain, nervous, or had to do math. (I guarantee you, everyone does math in their native tongue.) In those moments, it’d be nice to have a simple, seamless way to ask for help. And to be understood.
The 18th-century resolution states that the lawmakers “highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion, as well as the interest of the progress of arts in this country.” It further states that the lawmakers “recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.”
The translation, which is a version of the Protestant King James Version of the Bible, is not approved by the Vatican for Catholics. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists approved translations of the Bible on its website.
Tennessee’s legislation that names the Aitken Bible as an official state book notes that the state is home to “the largest publisher of authentic reproductions of the Aitken Bible,” which is the Aitken Bible Historical Foundation. It adds that Tennessee is home to “three of the five privately owned original first American Bibles remaining in the world today.”
The legislation received strong support from Republicans in the Tennessee House and Senate, who hold strong supermajorities in both chambers. The bill faced opposition from most Democrats but received one Democratic vote in the House.
Some of the other historic books designated as official state books in this legislation included President George Washington’s “Farewell Address” and “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville. The bill also recognized the 1977 book “Roots” by Alex Haley, which discusses slavery in the United States, and the 2016 book “Coat of Many Colors” by the Tennessee-born country singer Dolly Parton.
Tennessee lawmakers also passed a bill that would recognize November as “Christian Heritage Month.” The legislation was sent to Lee, but the governor has not yet taken any action on it.
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