Hacker News Reader

The classic joke in the '80s was that a systran project meant to translate Russian into English wasn't too good outside of purely technical work - The proverb 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' became 'The vodka is good but the meat has gone bad.'

View on HN

The joke dates from the 1950s. See https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22The+whiskey+is+ag... .

For example, https://books.google.com/books?id=90Y8AAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+whis... show the snippet from a 1958 publication:

"Univac cannot anthologize, though it has all sorts of language tricks, and can translate "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" to "The whiskey is agreeable but the ..."

and here's a 1965 reference of the same joke: https://archive.org/stream/journalofkentuck6319kent#page/272... .

wowzers - cool - I learned it in the early '80s from a guy who taught me - remembering some weird computers that usta be lying about, not at all surprised to see the barb directed at univac then - I believe it was aimed at Sperry in my day :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com