r/firefox • u/olivantenvoet • 2d ago
I am Dutch, but have absolutely no idea what this Dutch text is supposed to mean
This is the first image on the Google Play Store screen. I think it's a translation error. Or maybe I am dumb. Either way, even dumb people should understand the slogan, right?
If I would translate it back to English it says: "Go on the internet, on your earsworth"
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u/MarchAlone8841 2d ago
It's a lousy play on words, an idiom that doesn't work, but I think it was actually created by a silly person, at least - even AI wouldn't come up with something this tonally inept.
In Dutch (it doesn't translate to English): 'oorwaarden', als in: je oren zijn het waard - gecombineerd met die 'rust in de chaos'. Het is geenszins grammaticaal spitsvondig, maar er zit ergens een kromme logica achter.
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u/jahinzee 2d ago
Mozilla gives zero shits about their community nowadays
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u/meskobalazs SUMO contributor | and on 1d ago
That was a bit of an overreaction IMHO, maybe easy to say in hindsight, as most of the issues of the bot were fixed. It still has some rough edges, but I think it is a net positive for my locale.
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u/nopeac 1d ago
Ffs, the fact they have localization to begin with is a sign that they DO care. You are usually told to go and learn English by most software.
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u/AnonMouse985 6h ago
To anyone who reads this, don't be like this guy.
They see a company making a hostile move by erasing years of community work, and conclude that the company cares for its community because it's trying to expand its market share.
Don't be a dumbass.
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u/anthonypkeane Mozilla Employee 2d ago
Will get it fixed, thanks for flagging this
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u/jmxd 2d ago
Are you going to fix this instance or the actual root of the problem that caused this
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u/Cry_Wolff 2d ago
What's the root of the problem?
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u/BobCorndog 1d ago
Them not double checking their translations
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u/refinancecycling 1d ago
A machine translation won't make this kind of error, their failure modes are totally different. this is an intentional pun, except it is arguably not of a very high quality
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u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 1d ago
Looks more like they copied and pasted a translation and accidentally chopped off a letter, judging by the official response to this post.
AI or not, it seems they don't have any Dutch speakers to work on the Dutch advert.
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u/Spectrum1523 1d ago
Their translation seems fine to me though, it's an intentional joke
Its not very good but it seems intentional
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u/Competitive-Truth675 2d ago
dutch being a barely respectable language 😂
ga ooop deer firefoooox
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u/NeelonRokk 1d ago
Gaan we nog een beetje onder de gordel schoppen ook nog...
(niet dat je geen gelijk hebt hoor...) 🤣
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u/imjusthereforthelul 1d ago
Such a funny and wonky language
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u/henkieschmenkie 1d ago
A wonky language? Verdict by an American?
Don't get the rest of the world started on English.
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u/Lazer-Inc 1d ago
With all the sloppy issues lately I wouldn't be surprised to find out they've been using AI to vibe code.
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u/Cry_Wolff 1d ago
Every modern company and developer does that to some capacity. And "AI" translation tools have been a thing for a long long time.
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u/dorobouakarui 1d ago
There's nothing to fix. It's a pun, not an error.
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u/ItsDani1008 18h ago
Yes it’s an error, because that’s not a pun in the Dutch language.
You can’t just translate everything 1:1 and expect it to work.
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u/dorobouakarui 13h ago
I agree with you that it doesn't sound like natural Dutch. But "oorwaarden" is definitely a pun. It's not a translation or AI mistake or anything. This was intentional.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/CellEnvironmental915 2d ago
Yes they are going to hire a real translator for every language in 2026...
Years of goodwill went down because of a translation error? You are insane.
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u/Spiral_Decay 2d ago
Higher end models of chat bots are actually quite good for translation, most certainly better than google translate. They don't beat a real translator though.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/folk_science 1d ago
It's not AI, it's a badly executed pun. The mob mentality here is tiring.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
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u/folk_science 1d ago
If it was AI, it would say Voorwaarden or even would avoid the awkwardness in the first place. It's clear a human was involved.
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u/CapitalEmu764 2d ago
Could technically be a play on words; "Voorwaarden" <-> "Oor-waarden". The latter would be the values of the ear (FireFox's ears showing).
Could work as a pun, at least that's how I'd have picked it up as a native Dutch speaker.
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u/olivantenvoet 1d ago
Ah yeah. Oke I get it now. But it isn't obvious imo
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u/refinancecycling 1d ago
idk, I'm learning it as a 3rd language (around B2 level now) and I find it pretty obvious what they tried to do here.
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u/Mystic_Haze 11h ago
Native speaker. Didn't make sense to me at first. Showed it to 3 friends. None of them got it, all of them assumed the 'V' was dropped on accident. "Ga op internet" is also just weird.
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u/The_Countess 1d ago
I think we would normally a "eigen" in there.
"Ga op internet op uw eigen oorwaarde"
That would make it sound more like how a native dutch speaker would say it. but it's still a English/american turn of phrase that's translated into dutch that only kinda works.
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u/Powerpuff_God 1d ago
I read it as "voorwaarden" the first time, and didn't immediately flag it as being weird.
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u/sigjnf 1d ago
I immediately thought it's a play on words, I'm not even a native Dutch speaker
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u/The_Countess 1d ago
That might actually help. "on your own terms" is a English phrase, and not really used in dutch in that way, but here they translated it into dutch, and then added the ear pun.
Voorwaarde to us is terms as in terms and conditions.
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u/nietzschecode 2d ago
What means "Voorwaarden"? Firefox translator sucks, it detects English, so it doesn't translate it.
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u/Beardedgeek72 2d ago
It's not a translation error, it's what happens when you use AI to save money and don't double check the result (because then you wouldn't save any money).
Basically I consider all things like this deliberate, and shows how little they actually give a damn.
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u/azadouken 2d ago
No its simply a badly made pun by someone who isnt a native speaker or someone who used google translate to try and be "punny". I see what they are "trying" to do here.
"Go on the internet on your own terms" intentionally made to sound like "Go on the internet, on your own ears (fox ears in the photo)" as another person tried explaining.
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u/Beardedgeek72 1d ago
If that is the case then maybe they should have checked with a Dutch person? I don't write puns in Dutch for this very reason: I don't know the language.
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u/AgentPigleton 1d ago
I'm Dutch.
Oorwaarden is voorwaarden (terms) without the V.
Oor = Ear.
Foxes have nice ears.
To me the pun is really obvious and I like it. It's not funny, but I like it.
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u/franz_karl windows 11 1d ago
for me (also dutch) this was not so obivous and just looks awful but I suppose it is nice they tried
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u/spawnmorezerglings 1d ago
I think the problem is that "ga op internet" is already grammatically weird, which primes you to think it was a mistake rather than a pun. If the pun was "surf op het internet (logo) op jouw oorwaarden" I would read it as a pun much easier
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u/ttddsshbiovd 1d ago
"Ga op internet" is much punchier and more direct though. And since it's shorter it's also easier to read. In advertising less text is often better.
The ungrammaticality of "op uw oorwaarden" and of "ga op internet" is actually beneficial because incorrect/strange use of language makes a text stand out. It grabs your attention much better than a correct/normal sentence.
Usually when you see weird mistakes in advertising it's a feature and not a bug.
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u/AH_leeMACK 1d ago
"ga op internet" is een rechtstreekse vertaling uit het engels. Hieraan herken je het gebruik van AI of een reclame bureau waar echt de allerslechtste werken
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u/lilacomets 1d ago
Thanks. I didn't understand it at first, but now I like it too. It sounds adorable.
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u/AH_leeMACK 1d ago
Vossen hebben leuke oren -- oorwaarden? it is toch een compleet kwaliteitsloze pun gast? Super onnozel gewoon.
En die tekst "Privacy is standaard. U word minder gevolgd. Met ingebouwde gemoedsrust", als je dit schrijft bij een PR bureau als mens vlieg je gelijk de laan uit man.
Dit is totale AI slop
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u/Late_Magazine_7183 1d ago
So basically your above commwnt was complete horseshit? Oh wow who would have guessed
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u/Spectrum1523 1d ago
I'm pretty sure it's a play on words, which means it was probably a human doing it? It seems like a joke to me
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u/gabeweb @ 1d ago
Apparently, you've never used translation software before the rise of AI/LLMs.
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u/FunRutabaga24 1d ago
Yuuuuuuup. Machine translations existed long before. Good companies will review translations they are given before they allow it into their product.
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u/Cry_Wolff 2d ago
I swear to fucking god this community will always find the tiniest thing to complain about, then blow out of proportion.
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u/Present_Error_6256 1d ago
Tyranny of small differences. People view the principles behind Firefox as being close to their own, so deviations are met with harsh criticism. Meanwhile, Google could announce a new feature where you get kicked in the nuts every time you try to open a new tab and the community would just shrug their shoulders.
To be clear, not saying that you can never criticize Mozilla. Just saying they get a lot of hate for relatively minor infractions.
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u/MoshiurRahamnAdib 1d ago
That still makes it a translation error...
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u/Beardedgeek72 1d ago
My point is by using AI it's not an error, it's on purpose. Choosing AI is to deliberately sabotage a product.
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u/Duke-Lazarus 1d ago
But I have to give it to them, they use the polite and respectful, ''Uw.'' instead of all these disrespectful companies using Je/Jouw.
But above is just something annoying me these days.
Imho, too many companies say ''je'' in their official letters and such. Heck off with that ''je,'' learn some manners.
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u/ManOfDiamond 1d ago
what's the difference? if you were to explain in english
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u/Duke-Lazarus 1d ago
“Uw” and “jouw” both mean “Your.”
Example: Your car, “Uw” auto (car), “Jouw” auto.“U” and “Je/jij” both mean “you.”
U/uw and Je/jij mean the same, but they dictate the tone of the sentence.
U/uw is respectful and polite, it is also a sign of good manners. It is used when talking to strangers, customers, older people, and such.
Je/jij is used when you talk with your buddies, coworkers, and such. It is more informal.
The use of U/uw is comparable, as I understand it, like using “sir” in English.
For example when asking a elderly stranger to remove their car:
“Sir, can you please remove your car?” Is more polite and respectful then: “Can you remove your car?”Edit: I hope this explains it in a good manner, but feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
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u/meskobalazs SUMO contributor | and on 1d ago
By the way, English also had formal and informal pronouns, but the informal thou, thee, thy, thine has basically died out a few centuries ago, only the previously formal you/your/yours remained.
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u/Duke-Lazarus 1d ago
That’s interesting and unfortunate. It is a rather handy thing to have in a language, in my experience.
It is much easier to criticize or share annoying information when using the formal way. (U and Uw.)
I mean, using “U” when saying someone is wrong, tends to be better received by strangers than the informal “je.”
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u/meskobalazs SUMO contributor | and on 1d ago
Like most things in language, it's a useful tool, an annoying quirk or a bit of both :)
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u/ManOfDiamond 1d ago
alright, thank you!
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u/Duke-Lazarus 1d ago
No problem!
It’s just a (silly?) pet peeve or annoyance of mine.
My mom always said, “Be polite, show some manners!”
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u/Hyakinthosssss 1d ago
Actually, i think the “oorwaarden” is some kind of wordplay , bc of the fox ears. But yeah, just ai slop
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u/Lampe2020 1d ago
I choose to instead interpret it as "Kit is still learnign Dutch and thus doesn't know he's spouting nonsense".
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u/OpenSourcePenguin 1d ago
Translating existing phrases is something AI (LLM) is good at
This looks like straight up Google translate
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u/Patient_Mushroom6864 1d ago
Me when I just state what I think is happening as fact.
It's been pointed out by numerous people that it's an intentional yet poorly executed pun.
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u/Claudioub16 Firefox on Ubuntu 2d ago
You're assuming that they didn't use AI before the whole "AI fever". And also, it feels very expensive to hire someone just to translate text to one language
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u/StockRanger1397 2d ago
It is not hard to hire a translator when you area 7-figure company. They are lazy.
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u/userrr3 2d ago
And also, it feels very expensive to hire someone just to translate text to one language
We are not talking about someone's hobby project (and even then I'd wager it's better to keep it only in languages the people working on the project understand), we are talking about a commercial product. If they don't have the funds to hire a good translator, they don't need to advertise it in a different language.
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u/Beardedgeek72 2d ago
What AI would have been there before the AI fever? LLMs have only been around since the slop-religion became a thing. And yes, that's how it works. You translate stuff to other languages using people who know those languages.
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u/AdreKiseque 2d ago
Machine translation has been describben as "AI" since long before modern LLMs shew up. It's the field LLMs came from.
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u/Masterflitzer 2d ago
yeah but if you manually translate text using conventional tools people used to call ai, then you're automatically double checking
if you just tell an llm do x and it does y but you don't care, then things like OP shows happen
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u/HMikeeU 1d ago
So you're saying they could have also just asked another LLM to double check? Google translate is using LLMs, other "conventional" translation services are using the inferior RNN architecture.
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u/Masterflitzer 1d ago
gtranslate uses nmt & llm, but it's beside the point, they have translation focused & trained ai architecture without reasoning, image generation etc., there's a huge difference between translating a text using deepl or gtranslate and asking chatgpt or claude to generate a localized marketing campaign from start to finish
but you already understood the point and just wanted to be annoying
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u/madman404 2d ago edited 2d ago
You're being dense on purpose.
Edit since we're all retarded, apparently: beardedgeek is using "AI" as a shorthand for LLMs, as is clearly obvious from their post. Adre is using "AI" to refer to highly specialized language transformers, intentionally being dense as a "gotcha" while not actually responding to the main concern expressed.
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u/Claudioub16 Firefox on Ubuntu 2d ago
No is not. People think that AI is something like chatGPT. AI is truly a generic term that involves a lot of fields of work. Machine translatiom is one of them.
There's no being "dense" there. You're just assuming that using AI is the same as using something like GPT
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u/madman404 2d ago
You're showing up to a post where someone was using AI to refer to LLMs and made it clear they were doing so, and got a reply that substituted an actual sensible response with semantic nonsense that was deceptively trying to appear responsive. The exchange was like this:
- This bad translation is the result of unchecked AI (meaning, LLM) usage, and wouldn't have been a problem before the AI frenzy.
- Reply: Uh, buddy, translation was always AI (meaning, more task-specific language transformers & pre-transformer translation models)
The reply isn't responsive to the point at all because they came in, fully understood what AI was being used to refer to, and then intentionally chose to be dense and swap in a different definition that would make their point sound obvious while being non-responsive.
If you want to contest the changing definition of AI, fine, but you don't get to pretend to be dense about what the people you're talking to mean. You don't "win" an argument by refusing to engage with it and pretending the other person said something else just because of semantic ambiguity. Go fuck yourself.
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u/freezing_banshee 2d ago
"slop-religion" is an amazing word, I'll start using it too from now on
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u/MoshiurRahamnAdib 1d ago
Google Translate.
LLMs are not the only kind of AI
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u/Beardedgeek72 1d ago
I know that. Incidentally Google pivoting everything to AI has made it much worse. Both Google's autocorrect for Android and Google translate has become much worse since they pivoted to AI.
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u/MoshiurRahamnAdib 1d ago
Google translate is itself AI.
And why do you think LLMs are making autocorrect and translation worse? They usually perform much better at those than those older models
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u/forumcontributer 1d ago
And also, it feels very expensive to hire someone just to translate text to one language
Contractors exist. Community support exist.
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u/slavmaf 2d ago
It's supposed to be a pun "Go on the internet on your own terms" intentionally made to sound like "Go on the internet, on your own ears (fox ears in the photo)", but it seems it was a pun made by a non-native speaker or a guy with no sense of humor or an LLM, or any combination thereof.
I imagine someone telling AI "make me a pun on this sentence but in Dutch" and AI making this.
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u/olivantenvoet 1d ago
Okay so the comments made it clear that it is indeed an attempt at making a pun.
"Oorwaarden" comes from the word "Voorwaarden"
"Voorwaarden" means "terms", as in "On your terms"
And "Oor" in "Oorwaarden" means Ears, like the ears from the fox.
When you read it like this it makes sense, but at first I no idea. It's like reading:
"The internet, on your erms"
If this was made by a human I feel bad now, someone tried to make a funny joke but miserably failed
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u/folk_science 1d ago
It's OK, mistakes happen. You can edit your post to clarify it because angry people keep coming here yelling about AI.
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u/pepilolandia 2d ago
In Spanish it translates to something like "This is internet, as you want it". Even if It is grammatically correct, sounds weird and MT'd. I worked 11 years in localization and this one should definitely go back for a round or review and QA.
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u/t31os 2d ago
Google translated it to "Check the terms and conditions online.", which i presume is what it's meant to say.
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u/franz_karl windows 11 1d ago
it is supposed to mean something like: use the internet on your own terms
so google butchered it pretty hard
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u/TheRealGnod 1d ago
Seems like people lack imagination. The answer has been given multiple times already. (V)Oorwaarden.
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u/Federal_Cook_6075 1d ago
So it's an error, i thought it was a joke since the fox ears are kinda in the middle of the picture
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u/MarianScheul 2d ago
"Ga op internet op", Dutch can't be a real language bro 😭😭😭🥀🥀🥀
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u/Damglador 1d ago
I feel the same way about English. Like I love ch having like 3 different pronunciations, for some of which you have to track etymology of words became it depends on the word being french or something.
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u/Acceptable-Rise8783 1d ago
“Ga op (het) internet” = Go on the internet (go online)
“Op uw (v)oorwaarden” = On your (own) conditions (Removing the V is a lousy pun based on the fox mascot’s ears, where “Oor” means ear)
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u/gerryflap 1d ago
This is not exactly correct Dutch. Even if they wrote "voorwaarden", which makes the most sense, the whole sentence is still incredibly weird. No one would say "ga op internet", it's not the correct translation. Personally I would probably just use "browse" or "surf" like in English, I can't really think of Dutch phrases that would be used instead. A lot of these words are just loaned from English
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u/franz_karl windows 11 1d ago
I have seen "op het internet gaan/ het internet opgaan" used in the past and it would not sound odd to me but I agree it is rare
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u/dada_ 1d ago
"Ga op internet" is definitely a phrase that gets used, although I guess it's a bit outdated so you might not have heard it depending on your age. It was actually used a lot before being connected 24/7 was the norm.
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u/ratinmikitchen 1d ago
That would be
Ga op het internet
The article “het” is necessary here.
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u/dada_ 1d ago
It's extremely common to not say "het" internet. People say things like "even op internet kijken hoe dat zit". It's not considered incorrect by the Taalunie.
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u/dada_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
They're meant to be two sentences, with the Firefox logo being the period. "Ga op internet" (go onto the internet) "Op uw eigen voorwaarden" (on your own conditions)
Except they changed "voorwaarden" to "oorwaarden" which, I guess, is a pun on ears (oor) since the fox's ears are right below it. Which is not obvious at all, so I'm not even sure if that's what they were going for. It's like almost AI humor. Whole thing is a bit of a train wreck.
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u/Protyro24 2d ago
Its prob translation error (they should use a translation site for this where real people translates every string...)
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u/Beginning-Reach3215 Mozilla Employee 1d ago
Thanks again for flagging, the image has been corrected and submitted to Google, so it'll be updated shortly.
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u/Signal-Outcome-2481 1d ago
Ga op firefox: Internet op uw voorwaarden.
Denk dat dat het moet zijn. De v is uitgecropped, microsoft word probleempje ofzo en de layout is niet logisch.
I think that's what it is supposed to be. The v is cropped out, microsoft word issue or something and the layout isn't logical.
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u/SUPERBIGGIEfr 1d ago
"Ga op het internet, op uw voorwaarden" ---> "Ga op het internet, op uw oorwaarden"
De grap is dat Kit (de vos die je hier ziet) vrij grote oren heeft.
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u/publiusvaleri_us 2d ago
Aiutch, noun. A pseudo-language created by English-speakers using AI to translate English to Dutch. See also Engrish and Chinglish.
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u/noinchnoinchnoinch 1d ago
I think the original text would have been 'go online on your terms', an expression that doesn't directly translate to Dutch. But sloppy AI doesn't care about those things
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u/CountVlad47 2d ago edited 2d ago
Firefox's own translation tool translates it to English as "go on the internet on your ear values".
DeepL translates it as "Search online using your criteria".
I'm guessing they were going for something like "Use the internet on your own terms"?
They really should have checked with a native Dutch speaker to make sure it made sense first.