Hacklog: Blogamundo — poking holes in the language barrier since approximately 1 month from now

This is kind of random:

So I was buying groceries. The local supermarket has one of those self checkout thingies that are starting to catch on, where you scan stuff yourself.

Well, I accidentally hit the Spanish option, so, off I go, scanning in Spanish. Which was actually pretty fun, maybe I subconsciously did it on purpose.

The system where I buy groceries requires you to select produce from a touch-screen, so I leave that to last and do the bar-code stuff first. The only produce I happened to have were limes and lemons.

Well, moment of terror―there were people waiting in line behind me (already looking at me, a redheaded dude, rather quizzically, while the automated voice read off the prices in Spanish), and I realized I didn’t know how to say lime.

The lemons, of course, were limones, no problem.

I thought. But then I had one of those highschool flashbacks where you remember a long-forgotten mnemonic that goes It’s backwards from what you think! Lemons are limes! Limes are lemons!

Wait, Lima. No no, that’s the capital of Peru.

I mean Perú.

I mean… oh no! Everyone is waiting…

It had to start with an “l,” right? Push the “l” tab!

Okay, phew, there’s a picture of a lime. And it says lima. Okay whatever, crisis averted. Limes = limas, lemons = limones.

Interestingly enough, a friend of mine later explained to me that the translations in fact do vary depending on country, as this thread on the excellent Wordreference.com forums attests.

It seems lately that Google has increased the amount of stemming that takes place on search queries. At least, that’s my anecdotal impression.

Here’s what I mean:

Try this search:

“like an index” genes

Almost all of the results that come back treat genes as the name Gene.

It’s true that I can put quotes around that term:

“like an index” “genes”

and get what I originally intended.

Personally I don’t find that sort of second guessing very useful. If the user bothered to type the plural, they want the plural.

Would anyone argue that it would make sense to return plurals for singular searches, getting “genes” for “gene”? It doesn’t make that much sense to me to turn that around, which is what Google is doing at the moment.