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Translating Old Mate Grabaseat

This, from Google, is one of the many valuable services they provide. 

It’s beautiful. You just type the baffling words of another language into a box. And then click! Just like that, out it comes in crystal clear Queen’s English, as we like to call it if we are also given to saying the name of my country is New Zealand I'm a proud kiwi stop trying to shove Māori words down my throat.

But I digress.

What I want to demonstrate today is a nice Google trick.

We are going to collect up a bunch of mangled words that come out of Christopher Luxon, put them into the box, select Luxonnish and English, and click! Too easy!

Pretty slick eh?

I cannot help feeling that we would all do very much better if we could have this translation going full time.

Whenever he talks complete nonsense but acts as though it’s the authoritative opinion of a CEO in a suit, alarming numbers of people nod their heads like those little dogs people used to put in their rear car window.

They smile in affirmation as though it’s the real deal, even when it’s just nonsense on stilts and/or cynical misrepresentation that’s been written down in block letters by Chris Bishop.

So. A bit of real-time translation could be very helpful.

I’m thinking of something like a quiet David Attenborough voice over, explaining what Google has translated from Luxonnish. 

Let’s say he’s on the TV in the morning and they're saying to him something like, oh:

The CTU has crunched the numbers on your tax policy and according to this, half of all the  tax cuts go to just the top 5 per cent of earners which means someone like you would be getting a nice fat tax cut while more than 2 million taxpayers get less than a loaf of Tip Top a week, what's the story, Old Mate Grabaseat?

Let’s say he gives the answer he did this morning:

The major component of our tax policies that we've announced this year is to say, 'Let's just take the inflation, the thresholds that exist for tax today and then move them up by the amount of inflation'

Normally the interviewer would just let that stuff soak into the carpet and leave another stain.

But let's say we've got Google Translate on the job with David Attenborough. At this point David Attenborough would quietly say:

What Mr Grabaseat is doing is not answering the question at all.

If I say to you ‘how do you feel about horse racing’ and you reply ‘there’s no need to worry about an asteroid hitting us because they did this experiment and it was like totally successful’, have you answered the question?

No you have not, at all.

Inflation indexing is a completely different issue to taking away the top rate, but he is acting as though he has given an answer.

And the reason he has not given a proper answer at all is that if he did, he would have to acknowledge that although he claims to be looking out for hard working kiwi mums and dads, he’s really not.

If someone never answers the questions you ask them, how much would you trust them, eh? Something to think about.

This is fun isn’t it? Let’s try another one.

OMG:

Frankly, we are seeing that across the board with this Government. Big announcements, poor follow through, no delivery, and as a result, the outcome not being achieved.

Translation:

This is like standing in front of Aoraki Mt Cook and saying there are no mountains in the South Island. But you can possibly fool a lot of people in the North Island with that bullshit.

OMG:

This policy is extremely confusing

Translation:

It is not confusing at all,  OMG is just pretending to be confused. It’s like holding up a Big Mac and saying Where is the lid? I cannot for the life of me locate the lid on this thing. How am I supposed to eat this? I’m going to starve!

OMG:
We are going to take New Zealand forward

Translation:
Hands up who’s in the top 5%? Follow me to the Members Lounge.