Translating Google's China Blog: I Am The Ajar Joke Reply

Google just launched a blog for its China site, and because it's written in Chinese, I used Google's own translation tools to translate it. The results? No mention of the words "censorship" "freedom" or "Tiananmen Square" but plenty of hilarious non sequiturs. The translation of the headline of the most recent entry is "Also arrives the sweetheart festival". A note about Valentine's Day perhaps? Hard to tell, because here is the entire first paragraph, as translated by Google's translation tools:

"In an instant, also is one sweetheart festival. Whenever has the colleague asks why I and my husband does work in the identical family company, I always am the ajar joke reply, because I with did not prepare food again wash the bowl."

It doesn't get any better from there. The entry may be about a husband and wife working together at Google headquarters --- but then again, perhaps it's about a family argument over who should wash the dinner dishes, or maybe it's about the "many small animals: Hummingbird, hare, Shan Ying, ground squirrel" you can see at Google's Mountain View headquarters.

One thing we know it's not about is censorship. Don't expect to see Google telling its Chinese visitors about how it's doing the bidding of the authoritarian Chinese government, because that won't happen.