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[Google Translate
gives](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=%E7%A7%81%E3%81%AF%E3%82%AC%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B9%E3%82%92%E9%A3%9F%E3%81%B9%E3%82%89%E3%82%8C%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99)

> I can eat a glass

for

> 私はガラスを食べられます

The context is a file that can't be read because the filename contains
Japanese characters. When a certain PHP function is asked to read the file
`bug69753私はガラスを食べられます.xml`, it ignores all the Japanese characters and tries
to read `bug69753.xml` instead.

I'm assuming the Japanese contains a self-referential joke, but I don't get
it. Has Google Translate provided a good translation? What's the joke in the
message?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-20T02:00:48.543
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question
translation jokes
Is "I can eat a glass" a good translation of "私はガラスを食べられます"?
The translation of Google Translate is almost fine, but ガラス is not a glass for
drinking but glass as material. See [this
question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/19521/5010). I don't think it's
a well-known idiom, proverb, joke, cliche, etc. It's just a weird Japanese
sentence that is grammatical but nonsensical.

Anyway, how is this bug related to the meaning of the Japanese text?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-20T03:48:16.377
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answer
To explain the phrase, it seems the phrase 'I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt
me' was collected in a variety of languages by someone at Harvard University
in the 1990s.

<https://web.archive.org/web/19990116232350/http://hcs.harvard.edu/~igp/glass.html>  
"The Project is based on the idea that people in a foreign country have an
irresistable urge to try to say something in the indigenous tongue. In most
cases, however, the best a person can do is "Where is the bathroom?" a phrase
that marks them as a tourist. But, if one says "I can eat glass, it doesn't
hurt me," you will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and
respect."

This multilingual set of collated text seems to have then been used as an
example phrase to test multilingual text encoding support in various
circumstances.  
<https://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/0328-Amsterdam-IH/i18nslide.svgz> (2002)  
<http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/utf8/index.html#glass> (2011~?)

In summary, it's a deliberately-insane phrase penned in America, translated,
and used as an example where foreign text was required.  
It holds no profound meaning in Japanese, nor English. A fluent speaker would
likely use a more appropriate example text, so I would suggest the author knew
no other Japanese phrases.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-20T17:13:49.560
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answer