# Matz\_en and matz\_transrated twitter accounts

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/matz-en-and-matz-transrated-twitter-accounts/196001>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [October 5, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/matz-en-and-matz-transrated-twitter-accounts/196001 "2010-10-05T06:06:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![murfhy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@murfhy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/murfhy)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/matz-en-and-matz-transrated-twitter-accounts/196001/1 "2010-10-05T06:06:05Z")

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Many of you probably follow the matz\_translated Twitter account,  
provided by  
tera.cc via the translate-twitter application:

[http://twitter.com/matz\_translated](http://twitter.com/matz_translated)  
[http://twitter.com/#!/matz\_translated](http://twitter.com/#!/matz_translated)

This is a neat idea in terms of trying to allow English speakers who  
don’t  
understand Japanese to read Matz’s (and many other core Ruby  
developers’)  
tweets. However, it uses the Bing Translator which, uhh, well, isn’t  
great.  
However, this makes for some unintentionally hilarious bad translations,  
and  
I’m sure plenty of people just follow matz\_translated for ironic value.

I thought I’d try to solve the problem of poor translations and  
exacerbate  
the problem of unintentionally ironic translations in one fell swoop. So  
announcing the matz\_en and matz\_transrated Twitter accounts:

[http://twitter.com/matz\_en](http://twitter.com/matz_en) [http://twitter.com/#!/matz\_en](http://twitter.com/#!/matz_en) (Serious)  
[http://twitter.com/matz\_transrated](http://twitter.com/matz_transrated)  
[http://twitter.com/#!/matz\_transrated](http://twitter.com/#!/matz_transrated)  
(Silly)

The service is extremely simple and modern, based on the tweetstream gem  
(which lets you follow users via the Twitter streaming API), the rsay  
gem  
(wraps the Google Translate API), and the twitter\_oauth gem. The matz\_en  
account translates the original yukihiro\_matz account from Japanese into  
English using the Google Translate service. The matz\_transrated account  
takes the Bing translation output of matz\_translated, and round trips it  
back to Japanese and English again via the Google Translate API for an  
additional degree of Engrishness.

So how well does matz\_en perform in terms of good translations and  
matz\_transrated in terms of hilarious Engrish? The results are generally  
good but sometimes a bit mixed. With matz\_en, I notice the Google  
Translate  
API at least manages to produce non-broken English most of the time,  
even if  
the meaning is lost somewhat. Bing seems notoriously bad at producing  
broken-sounding Engrish. This makes matz\_transrated a bit strange as it  
generally produces better English than matz\_translated, even though the  
meaning is often completely skewed. One thing I definitely noticed was  
matz\_translated has escaping problems in mobile clients (at least  
Twitter  
for iPhone) which matz\_en does not and matz\_transrated actually  
corrects.

The code is so simple that it would be extremely easy for me to add  
additional Ruby core developers who tweet in Japanese or additional  
output  
languages. Right now it weighs in at 42 (!!!) loc, and that’s with all  
the  
credentials hardcoded into the Ruby code itself. I might factor the  
credentials out into a YAML file and publish the source on github if  
anyone’s interested.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![murfhy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@murfhy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/murfhy)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 6:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/matz-en-and-matz-transrated-twitter-accounts/196001/2 "2010-10-05T06:50:33Z")

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On 10/04/2010 09:02 PM, Tony A. wrote:

> (wraps the Google Translate API), and the twitter\_oauth gem. The matz\_en  
> the meaning is lost somewhat. Bing seems notoriously bad at producing  
> credentials out into a YAML file and publish the source on github if  
> anyone’s interested.

Hrm…

> Write Lua programs to be confusing because I like Ruby solder.  
> 43 minutes ago [http://twitter.com/matz\_en/status/26424331490](http://twitter.com/matz_en/status/26424331490) via  
> Matz Translator [http://twitter.com/matz\_en](http://twitter.com/matz_en)

Confusing alright.

Like the idea, though.

-Justin