I posted about this on Twitter but figured I'd throw this on the blog too. You may know that many non-Korean Asian movie stars have names that derive from Chinese, meaning they are usually ways of comfortably writing their names in Korean Hangul too. For example, famed action and comedy star Jackie Chan goes by 成龍 which can be Hangulized as 성룡 or 청룽. So if you mention being a Jackie Chan fan in Korea, people might not know who you're talking about. But call him Seung-ryong and everyone will get it.
Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, whose real name is more like Yáng Zǐqióng, writes her Hanja derived name in Korean as 양자경 (Yang Ja-gyeong).
But 양자 (Yang-ja) is also the Hanja-derrived Korean word for quantum (量子, measurement's child (?), referring to the smallest packet of measurement). And 경 (鏡) can refer to mirrors, glasses, lenses, as in 안경 (eye glasses).
Thus automatic translators Google and Naver Papago both seem not to realize that 양자경 refers to her as an actress, and instead presumes she is some kind of "Quantum Mirror."
It seems to depend on some contextual clues though. I think perhaps Papago is maybe unfamiliar with this actresses name in English. In these three headlines, it gives her the quantum treatment once, Romanizes her name once, and completely eliminates her once.
Google seems to get it right more often when her name is presented in context, but wrong when independent. Check out how the Google News search translates her name as the search term wrong, but all the articles about her right.
Just something funny to share about a woman who sure does seem to have a quantum mirror at home or at least some other kind of magic. How else do you explain how good she has looked for so many years?
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