Royal Enfield reviews: Accept no Substitutes

Battle Green Royal Enfield Classic 500 reviewed
on Gizmag.com (Loz Blain photo)

It's despicable, but there are websites out there that copy the work of legitimate writers and post garbled versions on the Internet, often fooling search engines into ranking them higher than the originals.

This happened recently to a critical but amusing review of the Royal Enfield Classic 500 by writer Loz Blain of Gizmag.com

His clever turns of phrase were translated into almost unintelligible drivel and posted on a site called ulterTech.com

The original author wrote:

"On the other hand, you can pick up something like the Classic 500 motorcycle, in this case done up in army green as a homage to the motorcycles of World War 2, for about the same price as your average commuter bike."

The pirate software turned that into this:

"On the opposite hand, you’ll acquire one thing just like the Classic 500 cc bike, during this case wrapped in army inexperienced as a deference to the motorcycles of war two, for concerning constant worth as your average commuter bike."

Fantastic: "army green" becomes "army inexperienced." Only a search engine's robots would mistake this clownish translation for real writing. But the phony version came first in the Google alert results I got.

The automated site favors us with this:

"Mind you, if someone very desires to own a go, your goose is braised."

What the hell? Here's the original version:

"Mind you, if somebody really wants to have a go, your goose is cooked."

The original author wrote:

"There's already an undercurrent of modern western city riders who long for the simplicity and charisma of these old-school classic style bikes."

The bastard version put it this way:

"There’s already associate degree undercurrent of recent western town riders who long for the simplicity and personal appeal of those old-school classic vogue bikes."

Sure it's funny. But the fact is that the original author is being ripped off and the phony version could inadvertently provide a harmful translation.

I wish Google observed the old adage "Accept No Substitutes."

Or, as the pirate software might put it: "Take No Alternatives."