News about short domain names intrigues investors, but it can be frustrating if the information is not available in English. Online translation services such as Google Translate may help, but sometimes critical information may be lost in translation. Here is a case.
Huashi Weiye(华世伟业) is a game development company. They acquired the domain name XYM.com in 2012 as the official website for a series of games titled 厦门游 (Xia Men You). The domain name matches the Pinyin name of the game series. In early 2014 the domain name was stolen, then resold several times until it was acquired by the current owner in 2015 for $15k (100k yuan).
Recently, the company tried to recover the domain name via legal proceeding (UDRP). The UDRP decision was made but not in favor of the company. The key point here is that the company does not own any registered trademark for the word XMY, and they failed to prove they have any common law rights to the name. The domain name is currently for sale at $330k (2.2m yuan).
Unfortunately, the decision is written only in Chinese. If you try to use Google Translate, for example, to read the decision in English, you’ll be very disappointed, because the translation contains many critical errors listed below.
1. Title of games (Chinese: 厦门游). The Chinese name means Xiamen Games. Google translates it as Xiamen Tour or Xiamen Swim, which are both wrong because Google fails to understand the context. The games have nothing to do with touring or swimming at the Xiamen city. It’s about games with extensive cultural elements of this city.
2. Geographical coverage (Chinese: 在中国福建省尤其是厦门市地域内是一款非常知名的网络棋牌游戏平台). Xiamen Games is popular only within the Fujian Province. However, Google translation is “especially in China, Fujian Province, Xiamen Local Taxation region is a very well-known network chess gaming platform”, which may imply the games are well-known throughout China.
3. Market prices of domain names (Chinese: 正常市场价格8-10万元人民币). The market prices for similar domain names were ranging from 80k to 100k RMB, but Google translation is “normal market price of RMB 8-10 million”, which is 10 times of the correct ones.
4. Police report (Chinese: 警方未予以立案). There is no police record, so making the case of stolen domain name is hard to prove. Google translation is “The police not to be a criminal; announcement”. How funny to see police announced to be not criminal!
5. Domain owner’s location (Chinese: 远在湖北的被投诉人不是游戏玩家). The domain owner is not a gamer and lives in Hubei, which is far away from Xiamen. Google translation is “The Respondent is not far away gamers in Hubei”.
6. Title of games again (Chinese:“厦门游”本身也带有高度形容性及地理名称). The name itself is highly descriptive and related to a geographic location. Google translation is “describe itself with a highly sexual and geographic names”. Where does sex come into play?
So, technologies of artificial intelligence in general and machine translation in particular have not come to a stage where they can stand on their own, and human assistance is still necessary. The moral of this story? Have a Chinese friend!
Note:
You can find the UDRP decision in Chinese at http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2016-0961.
Hi Lee Kassey
With Google Translation must know how to look life and here I give the example of how to do it and get away
Xiamen Games – Translation English – Spanish
Xiamen Juegos – – Translation from English to:
厦门JUEGOS — Simplified Chinese,
廈門JUEGOS – Traditional Chinese,
Not sure if I understand the process here. But, the simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese translations of Xiamen are good.
Hi Lee Kassey
Here you sending another way to search for the result you expected
What you publish is Simplified Chinese,.
To give out the best in what you wanted from the first in September and then a Chinese only translate Chinese traditional look and see That the same result of child Chinese writing is the same result.
厦门 游). .- Xiamen tour)
廈門 遊 – Xiamen travel
廈門 遊 – Xiamen Games
厦门 游). – Xhiamen Games
Investigate further but give an uneven result, I think that the problem is not s Google, I think the problem is habes two scriptures or three or more dialects in Chinese, this paradoxically happens where I live in Spain, in Catalonia autonomous region have 4 provinces in Barcelona the word “tomato” is pronounced in a different way catalan in Girona (Where I live in a town), in Lerida, and Tarragona to be the three remaining provinces of Catalonia. Writing is one pronounce.
Other examples with different results
Translate English to Tradional Chinese
在這裡，您發送的另一種方式來搜索您所期望的結果
你發布的簡體中國。
為了讓出最好在你第一次想在九月什麼，然後一個唯一的中國翻譯傳統中國看看，看看那個孩子中國文字相同的結果是同樣的結果。
廈門遊）。 .-廈門旅遊）
廈門遊 – 廈門旅遊
廈門遊 – 廈門遊戲
廈門遊）。 – Xhiamen遊戲
Translate Chino to English
Here’s another way to send you to search your desired results
What you publish is Simplified Chinese.
To make the best of things in your first set of unique Chinese want, and then translated Chinese traditional look and see Chinese children to write the same result is the same result.
Xiamen tour). .- Xiamen Tourism)
Tour Xiamen – Xiamen Tourism
Tour Xiamen – Xiamen Games
Xiamen tour). – Xhiamen Games
Thanks for your explanation. I appreciate your effort.