Can you name the foreign language when given a single phrase?

Sample	Language
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
C'était le meilleur des cas. C'était le pire des temps.
그것은 시대의 최고였다. 그것은 시대의 최악이다.
Það var besti tíminn, það var versti tíminn.
Es war die beste aller Zeiten. Es war die schlimmste Zeit.
這是最好的時代。這是最糟糕的時代。
Ito ay ang pinakamahusay na ng beses na. Ito ay ang mga pinakamasama ng beses.
Byla to nejlepší doba, a byla to nejhorší doba.
Het waren de beste tijden. Het waren de slechtste tijden.
यह समय की सबसे अच्छी थी. यह समय का सबसे बुरा था.
Det var den bästa av tider. Det var den värsta av tider.
.كان أفضل الأوقات. كان أسوأ الأوقات
Se oli parasta aikaa. Se oli huonointa aikaa.
Nó là tốt nhất của thời đại. Nó là tệ hại nhất của thời đại.
Ba é an chuid is fearr de uaire. Ba é an measa na huaire.

Sample	Language
זה היה הטוב שבזמנים, זה היה הרע שבזמנים
E 'stato il migliore dei tempi. E 'stato il peggiore dei tempi.
Foi o melhor dos tempos. Foi o pior dos tempos.
これは、時代の最高でした。これは、時代の最悪だった。
Това беше най-най-добрите времена. Това беше най-лошото време.
Ilikuwa nyakati bora. Ilikuwa mbaya ya nyakati.
Din kienet l-aqwa ta 'drabi. Din kienet l-agħar ta 'drabi.
มันเป็นสิ่งที่ดีที่สุดครั้ง. มันเป็นชั่วครั้ง
Ishte më të mirë të kohës. Ajo ishte më e keqe e herë.
Det var de beste av tider. Det var de verste av tider.
Bu kez en iyisiydi. Bu kez kötü oldu.
Это было лучшее время. Это было худшее из времен.
See oli parematel aegadel. See oli halvim korda.
Ήταν η καλύτερη εποχή. Ήταν η χειρότερη εποχή.
Fue el mejor de los tiempos. Fue el peor de los tiempos.

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Language of a Single Phrase Quiz

Rating:	Report a mistake
Created by: ZapRowsdower -
Contributed: September 26th, 2009
Published: September 29th, 2009
Category: Language
Plays: 113,908

Tags: single, foreign, phrase, sample

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	ZapRowsdower:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 04:16 GMT	13 points
	I took the phrase "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." and plugged it into Google translator. Can you identify each language that the phrase was translated into? I've only studied a few of the above languages, so please offer corrections to the phrases if you think you know better than google translator!

	Emperor_Ziggy:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 04:46 GMT	25 points
	For those of us whose computers can't process certain Far Eastern characters so well, perhaps someone could find a way to make the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean a bit more distinguishable than repeated rectangles.

	plujan:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 05:33 GMT	67 points
	Shouldn't "Tagalog" be accepted as an alternate answer for "Filipino"?

	quizzesarenice:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 06:01 GMT	7 points
	Great quiz! I'd love to see more like this. I tried Tagalog first too before it occurred to me to try Filipino.

	deej:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 06:12 GMT	15 points
	yeah i agree on tagalog too. it should at least be accepted if not the "right" answer. very cool idea overall!

	Chromatos:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 07:26 GMT	-3 points
	Only missed 3 (Irish, Maltese and Turkish). Nice idea for a quiz, I was thinking of doing something similar but realised I didn't have nearly enough linguistic knowledge.

	Majesteetti:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 10:25 GMT	8 points
	ZapRowsdower: As far as the Finnish one goes, I´d say that it should be: "Se oli parasta aikaa. Se oli huonointa aikaa." The first sentence is translated correctly, but the tool you used made a bit of a mess of the second one. Cool quiz, though.

	1447:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 10:47 GMT	10 points
	This is awesome. A little correction for Norwegian though. It's perfectly understandable as it is, but the correct phrase would be "Det var de beste av tider, det var de verste av tider". At the moment, the phrase translates into "It was the best times, it was the worst time".

	steeltown:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 10:51 GMT	6 points
	This quiz ROCKS, even if I got only 21. I LOVE it. More, more, more!!!

	Henners7:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 11:19 GMT	7 points
	I hardly got any, but i liked the quiz!

	marnavot:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 13:45 GMT	10 points
	Great Quiz, but I Laughed when I saw the Hebrew translation (It is my first language) :) "זה היה הטוב שבזמנים, זה היה הרע שבזמנים" is a better translation.

	thisisaname:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 13:52 GMT	0 points
	I agree that Tagalog should be accepted for Filipino. Also, this quiz has too much of a focus on European languages (20 out of 30, or 19 out of 30 if you don't consider Turkey to be part of Europe). More languages from other parts of the world might be nice; for example, I'm pretty sure that Quechua has far more speakers than Maltese.

	D3nn1s:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 13:58 GMT	2 points
	Does 'it' refer to something long ago in time ('back then, that was the best of times), or to something else? I'll make a correction based on that for Dutch.

	SixNapoleons:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 14:03 GMT	1 point
	@D3nn1s - Your paraphrasing is correct.

	ZapRowsdower:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 14:03 GMT	9 points
	Thanks for the feedback! I added Tagalog as an acceptable answer for Filipino. As for the European bias, I agree. However, I was limited by the options in Google translator. I would have liked more Native American, African, and Asian languages to work with.

	ZapRowsdower:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 14:09 GMT	6 points
	Thanks also for the translation corrections. I have updated the phrases. In terms of issues seeing Far Eastern characters, I could add an image file instead of the text, but it is my impression that user-created quizzes can't use images yet. Does anyone know of a way to do this?

	SPU:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 14:44 GMT	2 points
	Dutch should probably be "Het was de beste tijd. Het was de slechtste tijd." That back-translates to "It was the best time. It was the worst time," but I don't think it can be rendered more literally in Dutch without stretching grammar.

	SPU:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 15:15 GMT	23 points
	The score table of this quiz looks more like a normal distribution than almost anything else I've seen on Sporcle. That means you probably made a good quiz.

	freek:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 15:43 GMT	3 points
	If you want to have the coorect Dutch translation, you should use the sentence: Het was de beste tijd ooit. Het was de slechtste tijd ooit." There is no good literal translation for the original sentence in Dutch, but this translation comes closest to its meaning.

	lambda:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 17:10 GMT	6 points
	Many translations are suspiciously dissymmetric. In French, "temps" is right, "cas" is wrong.

	rainbownia:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 18:30 GMT	7 points
	Great quiz. Even if some of the translations are off. The point is whether you can recognize a language. With the corrections, it will be even more awesome! Good job.

	RebeccaAMax:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 19:22 GMT	1 point
	Italian should be "Era" rather than "E' stato."

	adal:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 19:46 GMT	2 points
	Very nice idea for a quiz! The improvement that 1447 suggested for Norwegian also applies to Swedish: "Det var de bästa av tider. Det var de värsta av tider." ("De" instead of "den").

	swellwrench:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 21:59 GMT	-2 points
	This is a great idea for a quiz, but honestly, generating these sentences with Google Translator is pretty silly and futile to begin with. It simply doesn't work that well. It would probably be better to use a Bible quote or something where there are real, professional translations into many different languages available online.

	Chromatos:	Sep 26th, 2009 at 22:28 GMT	14 points
	I think we need "It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times" as well.

	Sally:	Sep 27th, 2009 at 01:53 GMT	1 point
	I think it would have been better if you had chosen a sentence that didn't repeat so many words. It would be helpful ff there were more varied words. On the other hand though, "SPU" is right, that's a pretty nice distribution.

	Catherine_F:	Sep 27th, 2009 at 16:34 GMT	2 points
	@EmperorZiggy and anyone else having problems, Wikipedia explains how to find support for East Asian languages here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Multilingual_support_(East_Asian)

	gracie:	Sep 28th, 2009 at 06:21 GMT	1 point
	"c'était la meilleure des époques, c'était la pire des époques" would be a better translation for the french.

	shel99:	Sep 28th, 2009 at 14:18 GMT	1 point
	Great idea for a quiz! I forgot about the extra 'u' in Portuguese and could NOT figure out why it wasn't taking 'Portugese' when that's what it HAD to be! Also - I don't know why I didn't try 'Norwegian' when it didn't accept 'Norse', but maybe 'Norse' should be accepted?

	ulashima:	Sep 28th, 2009 at 16:02 GMT	5 points
	I wouldn't recommend Google translate, especially for Turkish. That tool's Turkish translations are so bad that they always make my head hurt. "Bu kez en iyisiydi. Bu kez kötü oldu" really means "This time was the best, this time it turned badly". The correct phrase should be "Bu, en iyi zamandı. Bu en kötü zamandı". The Japanese phrase has many flaws also, including the grammar. In Japanese, there are "polite forms" and "everyday forms" and the sentence's first part ends with the polite and the second part ends with the everyday form, consistency is a problem. The Japanese sentence's meaning is not as different as the Turkish one from the original, but it's a somewhat a little too literal translation; normally the Japanese would not use those words when using such a phrase. I'm not a native speaker of Japanese but in my opinion it should be: 最高の時代でした、最悪な時代でした

	WindSword:	Sep 28th, 2009 at 18:27 GMT	6 points
	Spanish should probably be 'era' instead of 'fue'. The imperfect is used for ongoing past events, and the preterite for singular events.

	Chromatos:	Sep 28th, 2009 at 19:32 GMT	11 points
	she199: Norse refers to an ancient language that was the ancestor of modern scandinavian languages, Norwegian is a different language.

	Rat:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 00:24 GMT	4 points
	I like this one, for sure. With a few more languages, and with the suggested corrections (and perhaps others) it should be published.

	SparkySpitfire:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 01:24 GMT	4 points
	I really liked this one, good job! :)

	lazeeeyes:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 01:29 GMT	5 points
	I couldn't read the hindi phrase as it was in nothing but question marks, but yet I guessed it correctly on the first try. I agree that this quiz would be difficult for those whose computer can't read non-roman scripts.

	Bartleby:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 02:04 GMT	3 points
	no pig latin? just kidding. i absolutely loved this quiz.

	magister:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 14:39 GMT	15 points
	Erat optimum temporum, temporum pessimum erat.

	jhsyodles:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 14:43 GMT	-1 points
	I definitely typed italian correctly several times and it didn't show up.

	tobinw:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 17:02 GMT	5 points
	I have a new favourite quiz.

	hscer:	Sep 29th, 2009 at 17:09 GMT	7 points
	Alright, who are the TWO people who haven't gotten English? (It's literally 2 people right now, .1% of 1633)