Romanglish

On Facebook.

Most of the translations found available on these social sites are a collaborative volunteer effort by native speakers of a given language.

On Facebook, for instance, you enable the Translations interface, you select your language, and you're able to right-click on any one line, and suggest or correct a translation.

Translation interface after right-clicking a word

A translation can also be voted down if the volunteer translators believe it's incorrect. For example, for a long time, the Romanian translation for the English imperative "Comment" remained 1 comentariu. I disliked this translation because it felt like the interface was informing me that there was one comment on the current post. That translation was, thankfully, voted down into oblivion, and a new one emerged.

Comentează much more fitting than 1 comentariu.

And so comes the Romanglish promised on the title of this post: Romanian verb a folosi (to use) + English gerund marker -ing = folosing.

Genuine Romanglish

At first sight, I thought that perhaps this could be the result of an automatic software translator — the right verb was selected, but the ending was kept in English. After looking at it, however, it is truly nothing more than a typo.

The correct form in Romanian would be folosind, versus the original English "using". The person doing the translation simply typed folosing, possibly influenced by the English form, and at the same time creating an interesting hybrid.

The equivalent mix, switching the languages, would give us the English "usind": to use + Romanian gerund marker -ind.