The Internet is so fun, I love it!

Was uploading some photos to my PicasaWeb album and noticed that someone had managed to find my photos and had left a comment!

It didn’t bother me much that the comment was in what seemed to be Spanish, or that for all I knew it could have been spam. But I did what any curious geek would do: I ran it through a translator.

ES UNA HERMOOOOSURA ..
DE PERRITO =)
PUPPY,
EL DEL ANUNCIO DE PAPEL PARA LIMPIARSE EL CULO

Comment from my photo album

becomes:

IT IS A HERMOOOOSURA. OF SMALL DOG =) PUPPY, THE ONE OF THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF PAPER TO CLEAN THE ASS

Of course, this is NOT a satisfactory translation. It’s almost offensive at first glance - like they could be saying he should be used to wipe someone’s butt. Or something.

But I persevered. I tried Babelfish with much the same result.

Hermoooosura didn’t translate, and I guessed it might be spelt strangely - like with to many o’s for instance. But Google wouldn’t translate ‘hermosura’ either. A quick search brought up this page and this discussion though, which says it means ‘incredible beauty’. So I believe ‘hermoooosura’ is better translated as ‘sooooo beautiful’ - like a young girl might say about a tiny white dog.

Realising that she was probably being nice, I kept trying to understand the translation. Further poking around in translations sites helped me realise that ‘anuncio’ while translated as ‘announcement’ can also be translated ‘advertisement’ or ‘ad’. I then quickly realised ‘paper to clean the ass’ (papel para limpiarse el culo) is actually TOILET PAPER! And it all falls into place. This is my rough translation:

It is soooo beautiful and small =)
It looks like the puppy off the toilet paper ad.

Translated comment from my photo album

What a lovely thing for a complete stranger to say! And how fantastic that someone I’ve never met - who doesn’t speak my language - can leave me a message, and I actually have a chance to understand her. To actually communicate across languages!

I have since learned that ‘perrito’ can be translated ‘doggie’ which is even cuter! and ’limpiarse’ conjures images of flossing! How marvellous is language?!

NOTE: I will post this on my education blog as well.