[HN Gopher] Ali, what's up
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ali, what's up
        
       Author : roywashere
       Score  : 143 points
       Date   : 2022-05-06 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (huntingbears.nl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (huntingbears.nl)
        
       | GekkePrutser wrote:
       | Yeah I noticed the same last night. The search suggestions are
       | also wildly... suggestive
        
       | phoe-krk wrote:
       | The website seems to have fallen due to the HN hug of death, but
       | I've seen this making rounds in the Polish news - there have been
       | screenshots of slang mentions of female genitals in the Polish
       | version of Aliexpress.
        
         | N-Krause wrote:
         | I got it before it went down and downloaded it, but don't
         | really know how to distribute a mirror via the files I have
         | locally.
        
       | k_sze wrote:
       | I blame it on machine translation.
       | 
       | DeepL, for example, fails hilariously with certain inputs. I once
       | got it to mistranslate things like these:
       | 
       | - "Kong Ming " (Kongming, the genius strategist/statesman from
       | China's Three Kingdoms period) got translated as "Confucius"
       | 
       | - "chage and aska" (a Japanese pop music duo) got translated as
       | "Cao Cao " (Cao Cao, founder of the Wei state during China's
       | Three Kingdoms period) or even "chinchin" (literally "penis" in
       | Japanese)
        
         | plonk wrote:
         | > "Kong Ming " (Kongming, the genius strategist/statesman from
         | China's Three Kingdoms period) got translated as "Confucius"
         | 
         | AI finally reached the level of a lazy high school history
         | student who didn't study enough.
        
         | oefrha wrote:
         | Google Translate once translated Mo  (ten thousand in Chinese)
         | to "million" for me. I was shocked it could make such a basic
         | mistake. It wasn't even that long ago, maybe 2018? Machine
         | translation has a loooong way to go.
        
           | eunos wrote:
           | IIRC even this error seeps into a publication made by the
           | GOP. Something about HVAC system in Wuhan.
        
           | JPLeRouzic wrote:
           | Not so bad for a machine, I once met a French Telco guy in
           | charge of buying/selling minutes at a large operator who
           | thought that "billion" meant "two million"
        
             | paradite wrote:
             | i remember reading something similar (unit conversion) on
             | HN. Maybe someone can link.
        
             | rypskar wrote:
             | Maybe because France use the long scale, so a billion is a
             | million millions
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-
             | sp...
        
               | Broken_Hippo wrote:
               | Same in Norway. I'm from the US and the large numbers
               | always take some thought. I didn't realize that I'd have
               | to relearn counting when moving here, but honestly it is
               | easier than trying to relate the time of day.
        
               | JasonFruit wrote:
               | The fact that international confusion over billions
               | doesn't arise more often points out how bad people are at
               | thinking about large numbers. We mostly don't notice the
               | difference between a billion and a trillion.
        
           | transthrowawayy wrote:
           | It was like that in 2020 as well -- I remember being really
           | confused trying to see how many views a Daoko video on
           | billibilli had.
           | 
           | IIRC at that point it would translate e.g. "23 Mo "
           | correctly, but 23Mo  would go to 23 million.
           | 
           | I tried reporting the error, no idea if they actually pay
           | attention to those!
           | 
           | > Machine translation has a loooong way to go.
           | 
           | Since large numbers on e.g. streaming sites are often
           | reported in multiples of Mo  in Chinese, but a million in
           | English, I did wonder if the machine "learned" that they were
           | equivalent.
        
       | buro9 wrote:
       | Could it be that the placeholder is based on the most popular
       | search and the most popular search wherever Aliexpress is not
       | mainstream is a NSFW term?
        
         | Beldin wrote:
         | I don't think Aliexpress sells fornicating women. I have no
         | clue why anyone would type in that - if anyone is looking for
         | adult-oriented entertainment, add "dvd" or "film" (both have
         | exact same spelling + meaning in dutch).
         | 
         | Aliexpress is (as far as i know) a place where you buy things.
         | This suggestion is not abuyable thing.
        
           | kergonath wrote:
           | On the contrary, if you are interested in this kind of
           | entertainment, it is not unreasonable to look for "women
           | fucking" and expect results related to that and not actual
           | human beings. Not that I would do that. Ahem...
           | 
           | Anyway, I regularly just enter keywords without appending
           | "book" when I am looking for some books on Amazon. For
           | example, I would not expect "WWII aircraft carriers" to
           | return a listing for the actual thing.
        
         | ammo1662 wrote:
         | It seems to. The placeholder and popular search are different
         | for differnet languages. You can switch to Deutsch and try to
         | translate the page.
        
         | seydor wrote:
         | likely. they do have extensive underwear and sex toy
         | collections and their prices are very low compared to shops in
         | europe that sell the same stuff way overpriced
        
         | iforgotpassword wrote:
         | I don't know, I got "Hoschen fur ficken" too a while ago and
         | WTFed. It sounds like a bad machine translation tbh, not like
         | something anyone would say/type. So if anything it had to be
         | searched a lot in other languages and then be translated
         | automatically, but that's... a weird approach? Why not track
         | the most searched terms for each localized version
         | individually?
         | 
         | Generally I don't know what most people buy on AliExpress
         | though. For me it's for electronics parts/sensors/... where I
         | can't find a cheap offering on Amazon, or if I feel adventurous
         | and want to try out some weird electronics device that you
         | can't get here at all. But do people buy panties on AliExpress?
         | Doesn't sound like you'd save much, you can get them pretty
         | cheap on Amazon etc. But maybe the ones on Amazon are
         | unsuitable for fscking?
        
           | HelloNurse wrote:
           | Popular Porcelainese search terms or catalogue sections,
           | presumably not obscene, automatically translated to European?
           | Actual popular Dutch search terms from Dutch-locale users
           | wouldn't be obscene (presumably).
        
           | netsharc wrote:
           | Loaded up the website, German locale, I got this suggestion
           | too.
           | 
           | I guess to test the theory about "most popular search", one
           | would have to get a botnet to search for a random string, to
           | see if it would show up as a suggestion.
           | 
           | As a side effect, the bot that monitors the suggestions and
           | create spam offers might start offering
           | "e99a507d-c1ef-416c-b704-166561a44ccd" for sale...
        
         | bennyp101 wrote:
         | I get "human hair wigs" in the UK
        
         | ajsnigrutin wrote:
         | Probably a combination of this and them not having a "bad word"
         | filter for those languages (while having one for eg. english)
        
       | unwind wrote:
       | I have also noticed a very sudden inrush of "adult-themed"
       | products in the endless matrices of suggestions (with thumbnail
       | images!) that are plastered all over the site.
       | 
       | I would very much appreciate a way to turn those product groups
       | off, since they disrupt my searches for weird handtools,
       | components, and other stuff that I actually buy (and quite often,
       | I've been a customer since 2014).
        
         | drcongo wrote:
         | Searching for "weird handtools" might be why you're getting
         | those results.
        
       | superjan wrote:
       | This can be very simple:
       | 
       | 1. A bored male person opens the site and types the first thing
       | that comes to his mind in the search box.
       | 
       | 2. Website records this as a new search and suggests it at random
       | to new visitors.
       | 
       | 3. Curious people click it, interested to see what the site will
       | respond.
       | 
       | 4. Website notices it is a popular suggestion! Suggests it to
       | more people.
       | 
       | 5. GOTO 3.
       | 
       | I have seen similar bizarre (though not offensive) suggestions in
       | google search. My colleage typed: "how do I" and google suggested
       | "how do i make my girlfriend hold her hand in front of a screen
       | and pretend she's a dinosaur". (Or something like it). Someone
       | typed it once, and if it is a random suggestion it gets clicked
       | by about everybody.
        
         | TremendousJudge wrote:
         | For several years, searching "client/server database" on Google
         | would return a first result for a web page with a pretty
         | explicit description of a sex act, and then a million results
         | referencing this page. At some point they fixed it, and
         | evidence that this ever happened is hard to find. It survives
         | in an urban dictionary entry[0]. I suspect the cause was pretty
         | similar to what you describe.
         | 
         | [0]https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=client%2Fser
         | ...
        
       | kubanczyk wrote:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20220506081417/https://huntingbe...
        
         | jaykk wrote:
         | thanks!
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | stingraycharles wrote:
       | Tangent, but in similar vein, has anyone seen in the past year or
       | two on Dell.com their cookie notification? The "I agree" button
       | has consistently said "Everyone's the Acceptor" for me.
       | 
       | At first I thought there was something weird going on client-
       | side, but it happens to me on every OS. Just took this screenshot
       | on my iPhone:
       | 
       | https://i.ibb.co/r4M5Cb9/52238-CC7-81-BD-4-B3-D-934-F-77-DB9...
       | 
       | (from URL: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sf/xps-
       | laptops )
        
         | junon wrote:
         | Mine now says "Accept everyone" which is a bit more wholesome.
        
         | jmillikin wrote:
         | Their site must be doing location detection, because it served
         | me a cookie warning in half-English, half-Japanesee. The blue
         | box is "Agree to everything and continue", which is grammatical
         | (if verbose).
         | 
         | The rest of the message, though ... it starts off "Our website
         | is Cookie (kutsuki)" and looks like two translations got jammed
         | together.
         | 
         | https://i.imgur.com/1u5mwLT.png
        
         | zorr wrote:
         | I noticed the same thing in Dutch, French and German.
        
           | vladvasiliu wrote:
           | This is weird, I have the "correct" message in both French
           | (fr-fr) and English (en-us).
        
         | aitchnyu wrote:
         | We once did an order cancelling feature in crunch. The prompt
         | had a cancel button in green (which will actually cancel order)
         | and a cancel button in white.
        
           | llimos wrote:
           | Clearly the correct choices are "Cancel" and "Cancel cancel"
        
         | sturza wrote:
         | I get the same "Accept everyone".
        
           | Aachen wrote:
           | Sounds like what bad translator might make of "accept all"
           | [cookies/terms]
        
         | klohto wrote:
         | "Embrace all" That's the spirit
        
         | plaguepilled wrote:
         | I saw this the other day. I love to see little tidbits of dev
         | insanity bleed through into final products, though I hope it
         | wasn't crunch-induced insanity.
        
           | marvin wrote:
           | A bank dev team I may or may not have worked in, accidentally
           | deployed <<allrighty, chap>> on the confirmation button for
           | fund purchases. Might have caused some consternation.
           | 
           | I figure we should just have left it like that.
        
           | stingraycharles wrote:
           | What's more worrying is that it's been there for a very long
           | time. Either nobody at Dell noticed, nobody cares, or nobody
           | is able to fix it.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Maybe everyone is using an ad blocker, which (at least in
             | my case) prevents the cookie popup.
        
             | gonzo41 wrote:
             | More likely, no one is willing to do the change paperwork
             | just for that.
        
               | jtbayly wrote:
               | That falls under "nobody cares" I think.
        
               | KptMarchewa wrote:
               | Once you make it hard to care, or even punish people with
               | additional work if they care, they stop caring.
        
       | the_third_wave wrote:
       | I gave it a try but only got suggestions to search for "hoesje
       | voor samsung galaxy a12" (phone case for Samsung A12),
       | "hulpmiddelen voor bandenreparatie" (tyre repair things) and
       | "horloges mannen horloge luxe merk" (luxury brad male watches)
       | and similar things. I never shopped at Aliexpress so I do not
       | have a search history there, I also wipe cookies and browser-
       | stored data between visits to commercial properties and I refuse
       | all third-party content (31% of the Aliexpress front page is
       | blocked but it still seems to work). Could these lewd suggestions
       | be related to whatever it happens to infer from the visitor's
       | history? It is worth an experiment...
       | 
       | I just set up an unprotected browser (Chrome) in a container and
       | cycled through the nl.aliexpress.com front page about 30 times.
       | It gave me a number of suggestions like the ones mentioned above,
       | none of them of sexual nature. I then closed nl.aliexpress.com
       | and opened pornhub.com and xhamster.com, closed those sites again
       | and opened nl.aliexpress.com again in a new tab. It gave me a
       | suggestion of 'neukende vrouwen' (fucking women) after reloading
       | the site three times. This could be a coincidence, of course.
        
         | Macuyiko wrote:
         | I don't know, I opened nl.aliexpress.com in a private browser
         | tab and immediately got the NSFW suggestion on first try.
         | 
         | The class of the div where the suggestions are placed is
         | class="hot-words", so I would say this is the result of someone
         | spamming the search box with nasty terms and AliExpress just
         | showing them based on 'popularity'.
        
       | helsinkiandrew wrote:
       | If these are just popular terms typed into the Aliexpress search
       | bar in Dutch rather than some machine translation bug I'm not
       | surprised.
       | 
       | I've worked on several high end furniture shopping sites which
       | got a small but consistent visits from people searching for
       | pornography.
        
         | user_7832 wrote:
         | > I've worked on several high end furniture shopping sites
         | which got a small but consistent visits from people searching
         | for pornography.
         | 
         | I'm... puzzled, but also speechless. What _were_ they expecting
         | on a _furniture_ site? Any chance these were bots? (Though I
         | wouldn 't discount human stupidity)
        
           | kroltan wrote:
           | A bunch of people are a bit confused by large white search
           | bars at the top of the screen, often mistaking them for the
           | address bar.
           | 
           | Hypothesis: this phenomena has been exacerbated by browsers,
           | which have trained people that URLs and search are the same
           | thing by having them search using the address bar. Also
           | explains people searching for website names on Google.
        
       | netsharc wrote:
       | China (and many other countries') firewalls block porn sites, so
       | I've wondered if many people are misusing AliExpress for...
       | something else.
       | 
       | Coming soon... AliHub? AliXXXpress?
        
         | magicalhippo wrote:
         | Exhibitionists certainly like to use it, since AlixExpress
         | allows uploading images in the reviews... some interesting
         | things to be seen when browsing lingerie reviews, or so I've
         | been told _cough_
        
         | thrdbndndn wrote:
         | What's the relevance? Why would Chinese people, of all people,
         | would misunderstand Aliexpress, a Chinese company's e-commerce
         | website, as a porn site?
         | 
         | If anything, Chinese typically don't really use Aliexpress at
         | all, but Taobao or TMall.
        
       | can16358p wrote:
       | GoDaddy's automatic translation to Turkish might be worse. Last
       | time I checked, DNS Manager's "points to (IP address)" column
       | translated to "fiyat/performans" which means "price/performance"
       | in Turkish. Notificed GoDaddy about it years ago but they've
       | never changed and I think it's still that way.
        
       | Fnoord wrote:
       | They also use the very same word for creating accounts versus
       | logging in to existing account. They clearly did not verify the
       | translation. I have yet to receive 3 packages from China ordered
       | end on Jan 2022 (I don't want them anymore after all this time),
       | but its a nightmare to get my money back.
        
       | thehias wrote:
       | Haha, I noticed that as well some weeks ago!
       | 
       | I thought some user-specific ad-specific search-specific
       | shenanigans were going on for my account... :D
        
       | lvice wrote:
       | I can confirm that this happens in Italian as well. I've never
       | visited the site before and my search placeholders in the top bar
       | are just full of weird NSFW terms.
       | 
       | Weirdly, it only happens to the desktop site, if I access it via
       | mobile I get mostly normal suggestions.
        
       | nicolas_t wrote:
       | Using google translate on Taobao is also a load of fun. You are
       | buying babies. Customer representatives call you darling... And
       | there are many more.
        
         | temp8964 wrote:
         | > Customer representatives call you darling
         | 
         | This is actually true. They call you "Qin ", which could be
         | translated to darling.
         | 
         | This is a weird thing though. Chinese people almost never call
         | each other "Qin ", not even between husband and wife. But one
         | day suddenly it became a common phrase used in customer
         | service.
        
       | m_eiman wrote:
       | My Spanish isn't perfect, but the suggestion text "hombres
       | denudos xxx" seems like it might not be to everyone's liking. Too
       | bad they don't have a Swedish site, I'm curious what they'd come
       | up with for us!
        
       | shimonabi wrote:
       | I have tried to contact them several times for at least 7 years
       | because they have a bug on the orders confirmation page for my
       | local language. It displays HTML code instead of the translated
       | text.
       | 
       | One time someone even answered that they are aware of it.
        
       | rambambram wrote:
       | Try looking for Raspberry Pi related stuff on Ali. It's funny how
       | many times the auto-translated text talks about "frambozentaart"
       | (Dutch for raspberry pie). Gotta love it.
        
       | FR10 wrote:
       | Ive seen this exactly in the Spanish language (es-PE) version
       | too. You also get suggestions that literally include XXX and
       | other key terms
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | hrdwdmrbl wrote:
       | My guess is that the suggested search is a common or trending
       | search term. Then in most languages they apply a naughty-word
       | list filter, but in other languages perhaps their filter is non-
       | existent or in-exhaustive.
        
         | zen_of_prog wrote:
         | For the record, the ones that I noticed a few weeks ago on the
         | English site were "human hair wigs" and "dildo". Could be that
         | they don't blacklist at all, or that they have a fun test data
         | set that was accidentally pushed to prod.
        
       | qwerty456127 wrote:
       | The whole idea of "NSFW" is hypocrisy. It has to die for good.
       | Every time something "NSFW" breaks out - that's awesome.
       | 
       | There are things/words we all have seen/heard but somehow are
       | meant to pretend we have not. This is absurd. This is why many
       | problems exist and can't be fixed - because we are taught the way
       | of thinking/speaking when we pretend living in a version of
       | reality different from what actually is real, even when we are
       | perfectly aware of that.
        
         | kevincox wrote:
         | I don't think NSFW means that we need to pretend that we
         | haven't heard of it before. It just means that at work, where
         | we are all paid to be there, it probably isn't a great topic.
         | 
         | I really don't want to be walking around an office and seeing
         | someone being murdered on a coworkers monitor or have a
         | coworker talk about the sex they had on the weekend.
        
           | qwerty456127 wrote:
           | > It just means that at work, where we are all paid to be
           | there, it probably isn't a great topic.
           | 
           | Sure, as long as what we compare to is the actual business we
           | are meant to do.
           | 
           | > really don't want to be walking around an office and seeing
           | someone being murdered on a coworkers monitor or have a
           | coworker talk about the sex they had on the weekend.
           | 
           | Why? If our work process allows to take a break and read news
           | (instead of just working non-stop) - it's OK to view a crime
           | scene on the monitor. If we consider it fine to talk about
           | the barbecue they had on the weekend it also is OK to talk
           | about the sex they had on the weekend. IMHO. Why not?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | cyberpunk wrote:
       | My favourite translation error lately was this one:
       | 
       | https://imgur.com/a/C8zV5Do
       | 
       | I'm already searching in German, so no need to translate; and it
       | 'translated' by replacing 'Englisch' into 'Deutsch'.
       | 
       | Top marks amazon! :D
        
         | KMnO4 wrote:
         | Oh man, Imgur has definitely fallen victim to asshole design. I
         | was confused with the image you had linked for a while until I
         | realized the image was hidden under a banner ad.
         | 
         | The one I was looking at was a completed unrelated "suggested
         | image".
        
         | fer wrote:
         | That reminds me of the automatic translator in Telegram. If for
         | example you translate from German to English and the message
         | includes a German flag emoji, under certain conditions (that
         | aren't very clear to me) it will turn into a British flag.
        
           | felurx wrote:
           | Afaik Telegram just uses Google Translate for that feature.
           | Could you maybe try copying a message where that happens into
           | Google Translate?
        
       | gsmgo wrote:
       | confirmed in spanish
        
       | Cthulhu_ wrote:
       | I'm confident the localizations are done on the fly,
       | automatically; it makes sense, as it did ten+ years ago, to pull
       | a site's content through google translate or an equivalent so
       | that you cover more languages. But it has flaws, obviously.
       | 
       | I can imagine translation engines don't do very well with just
       | one off words and phrases like "accept all" as mentioned in the
       | comment about Dell's website, instead of them being used in a
       | sentence.
       | 
       | It's translation engines and the cheapest translation services,
       | who will also try to use automation as much as possible.
        
         | xaitv wrote:
         | This reminds me of another translation Aliexpress (used to?)
         | make for the Dutch version. In English, "China" can mean 2
         | things:
         | 
         | - The country
         | 
         | - The ceramic material
         | 
         | In Dutch these have 2 different words("China" and "Porselein").
         | Aliexpress translated "China" in the "Shipping from" section to
         | "Porselein"(so the ceramic material).
        
         | msh wrote:
         | Few things scares me away as fast from a shop as an obviously
         | machine translated web page.
         | 
         | I have no issue buying from a English webpage, but a webpage
         | machine translated to danish makes me doubt the competence of
         | the page and if its even possible for me to communicate with
         | customer support if needed.
        
         | ajsnigrutin wrote:
         | Yep, and they probably have a "bad word" filter for english,
         | chinese and maybe spanish, while they let all the other
         | languages go through.
        
           | flurdy wrote:
           | They probably went like my previous client through a cycle of
           | starting with a single text file of bad words --> to
           | integrating with one proper swearing service (pottymouth,
           | cleanspeak, etc. --> to several services in fallback mode in
           | several languages --> to realising with their traffic that
           | costs a bomb so to back to static files again. Hopefully i18n
           | bundles but probably as you say just in a couple languages.
           | 
           | I have always been able to swear everywhere online in
           | Norwegian.
        
           | freeone3000 wrote:
           | They assuredly do not have one for English -- "sex panties"
           | and "dildo" are just as common for English placeholders.
        
             | 3np wrote:
             | Neither of those sound like "bad words"? Notable absence of
             | "fuck panties".
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kauguste281 wrote:
       | It's just a slightly weird translation of a popular search query,
       | which Aliexpress uses as search text placeholder. But that's
       | actual items that Aliexpress sells and they do exactly what the
       | text says, so there is nothing really wrong here on a technical
       | level.
       | 
       | Now if those items or their search queries should make it into
       | front-page recommendation, that's another story.
        
         | roywashere wrote:
         | Aliexpress does not sell women afaik
        
           | GekkePrutser wrote:
           | They are probably looking to expand into the market vacuum
           | left by Silk Road, lol
           | 
           | Next week they will do 'medications'?
        
         | hnbad wrote:
         | What exactly is "women having sex" a weird translation for? I
         | can get how "panties for sex" is an awkward translation for
         | lingerie, but the Dutch one seems off.
        
           | kauguste281 wrote:
           | If I go to nl.aliexpress.com I get "neukende vrouwen naakt
           | bikini" which translates to "fucking women nude bikini" which
           | is the game-of-telephone version of "panties for sex". OP got
           | a shorter version with the "naakt bikini" missing.
        
       | junon wrote:
       | Mine defaults to German and states "Vibrators" (in German).
        
       | raarts wrote:
       | Using dictation function of my Apple Macbook. In Dutch. I say:
       | 'abstract data types'. MacOS - not understanding English in Dutch
       | mode - translates into : 'heb seksdate thuis' ('having a sex date
       | at home').
       | 
       | This happened while dictating feedback to students..
        
       | gunfighthacksaw wrote:
       | Years and years of 4chan have fried my brains to the point that
       | it makes perfect sense what this all means, but I think it's just
       | meme-psychosis inspired magical thinking.
        
       | krono wrote:
       | Aliexpress at one point decided I was going to have to learn
       | either Russian or Hebrew if I wanted to shop there again. It
       | seems tied to my account as it just flips me right back to either
       | one of those languages when I log in. It helped me get out of my
       | low-key shopping addiction at least.
       | 
       | A few months ago, one of the sellers I had purchased some stuff
       | from (only for about EUR200 over a span of 2 years) contacted me
       | on my personal email and asked in very broken English if
       | everything was alright since he hadn't seen me in a while. He
       | sent me a bunch of coupons for his Aliexpress shop and several
       | links to those really well made fakes everyone is always looking
       | for on there (so now you know, the trick to finding those is
       | through your Shanghai bff :) ).
       | 
       | The products are cheap, the sellers surprisingly kind, but the
       | place itself is just really weird!
        
         | ClumsyPilot wrote:
         | One day when you are lost and i jured in a forest, who will
         | find you? An aliexprress seller!
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | nextstep wrote:
       | This isn't really NSFW in DE... many shopping sites will show
       | erotic items of the main page.
        
       | vsnf wrote:
       | Am I crazy or is the actual NSFW term never actually described by
       | the blog post?
       | 
       | I can't for the life of me figure out what, exactly, is the issue
       | here because I do not speak Dutch or German.
        
         | the_origami_fox wrote:
         | In the image it's the grey text in the red bar next to
         | AliExpress. I know Dutch as a second language and it pops out
         | as very rude, like something you would see on a porn site. The
         | Google Translation is accurate.
        
         | Conlectus wrote:
         | The term is "Hoschen fur ficken"
         | 
         | > Hoschen means panties, and ficken means, well...
         | 
         | Hint: Dutch is a close cousin to English. Try just pronouncing
         | it.
        
           | vsnf wrote:
           | I appreciate your response, but this is the same thing I'm
           | annoyed about by the article itself -- it's an article
           | written in English, describing a naughty phrase in Dutch, and
           | then leaves only hints about the real problem. We're all
           | adults here, you can write the phrase without fear of
           | reprimand.
           | 
           | I think it's a little... I don't know, rude? Inconsiderate?
           | to leave the reader with the task of filling in the blanks.
        
             | pledg wrote:
             | The linked article includes 'The text means "women who are
             | f*cking"'. Seems fairly clear unless they added this after
             | your post.
        
               | vsnf wrote:
               | The article seems to have been updated to include the
               | English translation. It wasn't there when I posted
               | originally.
               | 
               | If the author is reading this, thank you for the update,
               | it's much appreciated
        
             | GekkePrutser wrote:
             | "neukende vrouwen" means "women fucking" in Dutch.
             | 
             | "Hoschen fur ficken" means panties for fucking in German.
             | 
             | As you see, a hint is enough :P
        
             | rmetzler wrote:
             | It means ,,Panties for fucking".
        
             | paulluuk wrote:
             | Dutch person here. Not sure if I can actually post the
             | translation here due to rules/moderation, but the dutch
             | term basically means "women in the process of copulating".
             | Likewise, the german one means "panties for copulating".
             | I'm guessing that copulating is a term that I'm allowed to
             | use here, but the real translation is the actual word that
             | you'd normally use.
             | 
             | As for the rude/inconsiderate part: I guess it is a little
             | bit rude, as the target audience is clearly english
             | speakers.
             | 
             | On a similar note (unrelated to this discussion), as a
             | dutch dev who works a lot with americans I think it's quite
             | rude when native english speakers use idioms ("bob's your
             | uncle", etc) when speaking with non-native english
             | speakers. Even though they understand the words they still
             | have to infer the meaning of such idioms from context,
             | which can make them feel stupid (especially if they get it
             | wrong).
             | 
             | The worst one being the "what's up?" or "how are you
             | doing?" greeting without expecting an actual, heart-felt
             | response. That one always gets me.
        
           | StevigeHoning wrote:
           | "Hoschen fur ficken"
           | 
           | Is German not Dutch.
        
         | roelschroeven wrote:
         | The Dutch text "neukende vrouwen" means "women who are having
         | sex". The German text "Hoschen fur ficken" means "panties for
         | having sex".
         | 
         | I agree that for an article obviously intended for an
         | international audience it's weird and lazy not to provide a
         | translation for the very thing that the article is about.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | hibbelig wrote:
         | The Dutch one is explained in the post as "women who are f
         | _cking", but the German one is not spelled out quite so
         | clearly. It's "panties for f_ cking". Does that help?
        
       | davemtl wrote:
       | I've had the suggestion "sex balls" show up as the place holder
       | of the search box once. I posted a screenshot of it back in 2019:
       | https://twitter.com/DavieDavieDave/status/117813945962534502...
        
       | beanders wrote:
       | Definitely something strange going on haha... at the moment, en-
       | us, I see "frontal wig human hair"
        
       | MarkusWandel wrote:
       | Ali does have some kinky stuff though and their
       | terminology/suggestions can get really strange even in English.
       | For example, I tinker with old road bikes. A very handy gadget
       | for changing to modern shifters is a "downtube cable stop" but
       | you'll never find it on Ali under that name. I need to go to my
       | old orders and find it again. Ah yes, "outer stopper assembly"
       | brings it right up. Fairly pricey by Ali standards; I expect
       | these are genuine Shimano parts just not worth producing cheap en
       | masse.
        
       | larrysalibra wrote:
       | Back in 2016, my name ended up on the physical menu in a
       | restaurant in Shenzhen as the english translation for the dish
       | Mei Shi Za Ba Fan  - "American-style assorted grilled meats."
       | https://twitter.com/larrysalibra/status/728498064877490176
       | 
       | Despite living in Hong Kong and traveling frequently to Shenzhen
       | at the time, I found out from a high school buddy from growing up
       | in Ohio that lived in the USA and had no real connection to China
       | besides this one business trip.
       | 
       | It appears someone who couldn't read english at all had used
       | baidu translate to translate the menu. It turned out baidu
       | translate was translating "Ba Fan " - assorted grilled meats - to
       | my Twitter (HN, etc) username for YEARS.
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/larrysalibra/status/959749866036408320
       | 
       | Crazy world.
       | 
       | Lesson: if you can't read the language, blindly trusting
       | translation is always a bit of a gamble!
        
         | yongjik wrote:
         | Reminds me of a Chinese menu item that was translated into
         | Korean as "seobu apeurika weonjuminyi sseurarin cuwi" (bitter
         | coldness of indigenous Western Africans). Made rounds in the
         | Korean internet some years ago.
        
         | Tao332 wrote:
        
           | noduerme wrote:
           | At least you can't fake French cuisine. There's no powdered
           | substitute for actual pork assholes stuffed inside other pork
           | assholes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andouillette
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | noduerme wrote:
         | Hey, the first time I visited Vietnam I was blind tired from
         | traveling, sat down at an outdoor restaurant on a kindergarten
         | sized chair, got a warm beer and looked at a menu where
         | everything was in Vietnamese. The only thing in English was
         | "AMERICAN BEEFSTEAK". So I ordered that (dumb, sure, but they
         | were really amused to have an actual American there. It was a
         | really fun scene, late night and lit up, busy joint).
         | 
         | I'm pretty much 100% certain that what came out of the kitchen
         | was a filet of dog. It was a piece of meat. It was a bit
         | charred. Definitely neither pork nor beef. But red. Thin, like
         | it was from alongside the ribs of a medium sized animal. Gamey.
         | A bit stringy. Tough. I ate it, but I cried inside. (My ex got
         | some nameless white fish from the Mekong and was sick for a
         | couple days, so I was kinda lucky).
         | 
         | So yeah, watch out for when they translate you into "American-
         | style" something. What they usually mean is "barbarian" lol
        
           | rntksi wrote:
           | Believe it or not ... no, you did not eat dog meat.
        
             | zyngaro wrote:
             | How do you know ?
        
         | tempodox wrote:
         | Funny, Google Translate renders "Ba Fan " as "grilled rice".
         | Never trust an automated translation if you don't know both
         | languages.
        
           | yakkomajuri wrote:
           | My knowledge of Chinese is slim (and getting worse!) but Fan
           | is indeed "rice". However, it is also used as "meal" in a lot
           | of contexts.
           | 
           | It's common to say Chi Fan  (eat rice) as a way of saying "to
           | have a meal".
           | 
           | Unsure what it is supposed to mean in this context though.
           | 
           | (note: also don't trust a random person on the internet - me
           | - with your translations)
        
             | Razengan wrote:
             | > _It 's common to say Chi Fan  (eat rice) as a way of
             | saying "to have a meal"._
             | 
             | So like "break bread", "earning bread", "bread and butter"
             | etc.
        
             | HidyBush wrote:
             | Fun fact: just as the Chinese (and I think other asian
             | cultures) utilize "rice"(their staple grain) as a synoym
             | for a meal so in English we use the concept of a staple
             | grain as a synoym for a meal: meal.
        
               | tylerfontaine wrote:
               | I can't believe this usage of "meal" never occurred to
               | me. That's an amazing bit of trivia.
        
               | imperistan wrote:
               | This is something of all ages I guess. In the Bible
               | (written thousands of years ago) they use 'eating bread'
               | as a synonym for having a meal together.
        
               | KptMarchewa wrote:
               | English use tea for some reason.
        
               | gumby wrote:
               | That's because in Victorian times the lower classes often
               | couldn't afford a meal at that time and had to subside on
               | some tea and perhaps a slice of bread.
               | 
               | The use of "tea" for that meal remains a class signifier;
               | my paternal grandmother used it, my parents did not (my
               | mother, despite not being a native speaker, presumably is
               | the one who eradicated it from my father's vocabulary),
               | and yet I continue to say unwittingly say it occasionally
               | though I now live in the USA. A vestigial Australianism
               | in my case
               | 
               | It's definitely "non-U" in the UK, though that whole
               | world is mostly gone.
        
               | sleightofmind wrote:
               | I've heard it as "breaking bread." I like the phrase. But
               | yeah, it's essentially the same as eating bread, and it
               | clearly refers to having a meal and is not limited to
               | bread.
        
               | carapace wrote:
               | "Companion" is literally someone you eat bread with: "co"
               | or "com" is together ("community") and "pan" is bread.
        
               | Svip wrote:
               | As far as I can tell, "meal" (time) and "meal" (flour)
               | have different etymological origins. There was still a
               | difference in spelling in Middle English (mel vs mele),
               | but that distinction was lost in Modern English.[0]
               | 
               | [0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/meal
        
             | chrisjc wrote:
             | Person from GB: "how about a little tea?"
        
             | nirui wrote:
             | I'm also a random person on the Internet, but I can confirm
             | that "Fan " can mean both "rice (Mi )" or meal, depends on
             | the combination of word. "Chi Fan " almost always mean
             | "have/having/had a meal".
             | 
             | However, based on my research (1), "Ba Fan " is likely a
             | meal type rather than an action. For example, "Ji Ba Fan "
             | consists of a bowl of rice covered by a layer of pre-cooked
             | chicken breast plus some veggies. The rice itself seemed
             | normally cooked, not grilled. And yes, this sounded very
             | similar to "Gai Jiao Fan " which is also a meal type.
             | 
             | 1: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E6%89%92%E9%A5%AD&iax=images&
             | ia=i... yes, quite literally a re-search
             | 
             | (Me been a local to the country, you would assume that I
             | knew this kind of things. Well...no, this is the first time
             | I learned this term. But if someone asks me "Hey do you
             | want some Ji Ba Fan ?", I'll take my chances.)
        
               | livinglist wrote:
               | no Chi Fan  doesn't always mean have a meal, when asking
               | if some one would prefer rice or noodle, it's 'Chi Fan
               | Huan Shi Chi Mian ' ( you eat rice or noodle), it heavily
               | depends on the context.
        
               | thrdbndndn wrote:
               | I'm a native Chinese. I think it's Zhu Ba  Fan  or Ji Ba
               | Fan , Zhu Ba =Zhu Pai =pork chops*.
               | 
               | Note: Pai  literally means ribs. But this dish has been
               | evolved quite a bit and now Zhu Pai  could be any part of
               | pork, and I'd say pork chop is actually more common than
               | actual ribs nowadays. Same goes to chicken - Ji Pai /Ji
               | Ba  is typically just chicken breast (not like chicken
               | has ribs to begin with, hehe).
        
         | lifthrasiir wrote:
         | Naver, a major Korean website, has its own MT service called
         | Papago [1] which rivals Google translate for supported language
         | pairs. One day it started to translate a URL to Amazon German
         | to an email address of my friend, who is a member of the KDE
         | localization team and presumably his address made into the
         | bilingual corpus Papago used. It took him years and also a
         | governmental intervention to realize the origin of mysterious
         | emails and sort the whole thing out.
         | 
         | [1] https://papago.naver.com/
        
         | martincmartin wrote:
         | Reminds me of the "Translate server error" fails:
         | https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11907
        
       | nottorp wrote:
       | Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
       | Someone probably didn't know to translate "sexy party dress" or
       | something like that.
        
         | bambax wrote:
         | Agreed. For some reason, translation is considered secondary,
         | and many websites resort to automatic translation tools. They
         | produce content that seems "good enough" but often result in
         | snafus like this.
         | 
         | A proper translation company would cost a lot more, sure, but
         | the results would be orders of magnitude better.
         | 
         | This is somewhat similar to the way money is spent on making
         | movies. Pennies are saved during the writing process, and
         | millions wasted on stars, locations, special effects, to shoot
         | pointless scenes in stories that make no sense.
        
         | hrdwdmrbl wrote:
         | The "popular search term" theory also fits with incompetence
         | since it's automation run wild :)
        
       | ralfn wrote:
       | My favorite of Ali Express in Dutch is that they ship from
       | Porcelain. We understand they mean China and it's obvious what
       | happened.
       | 
       | Their MT for Chinese to Dutch was trained on Chinese translations
       | but used for Dutch translations.
        
       | anoncow wrote:
       | The page is slashdotted.
        
         | blenderdt wrote:
         | Edit: ah yes, you are talking about the blog..
        
           | fudgefactorfive wrote:
           | I think he meant the blog post hosted by Michiel, not
           | AliExpress the massive conglomerate...
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | I think parent comment is about the blog, not Aliexpress.
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-06 23:01 UTC)