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uTorrent: An Organization With A Slight Craving For Power

For a while now, the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent has been marketed as a “an organization with a slight craving for power” to Italian users. A sentence that is as weird as it sounds in this context, even to Italians. Is there something evil about BitTorrent Inc. that we don’t know of, or is there a logical explanation?

Italian BitTorrent users who want to give the BitTorrent client uTorrent a try are being exposed to a little bit of mystery. The client they have heard so many great things about is being promoted using a rather awkward tagline to describe what it does.

“Un’organizzazione con una velata brama di potere,” we read on the uTorrent website.

For those who don’t speak Italian, Google translates this sentence to “An Organization With a Veiled Desire for Power.” Another translation provided by an Italian friend of TorrentFreak is “An Organization With a Slight Craving for Power.” Both translations have pretty much the same meaning, but they also have very little to do with a BitTorrent client.

So what organization is uTorrent actually referring to? Is uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc. craving for power? We’re lost here.

An Organization With A “Slight” Craving For Power

utorrent power

The answer to the above question is not very hard to find of course. Those who look at the english uTorrent website will see the tagline “A Powerhouse With a Tiny Appetite,” referring to the client’s minimal use of resources and full set of features.

Somehow, this tagline has been translated into something that has little to do with the intended meaning. We’re not really sure where the mistake was made either, because most of the automatic translations come up with a different result. It’s clear though that the tagline got lost in translation, to say the least.

The error was mentioned last week to the staffers in the uTorrent IRC-channel, but thus far hasn’t been corrected. We just notified BitTorrent Inc. about the unfortunate message on their Italian page and assume that this ‘bug’ will soon be fixed.

Let’s hope they check with a native speaker next time, before putting it out to millions of people.

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  • Grok

    That’s… hilarious.
    And here I was expecting some sneaky underbelly being exposed. You tease.

  • Bite The Wax Tadpole

    I’m often amused at the Chinese-English translations. Even direct word-for-word translations can have some very strange connotations.

  • Relevance

    Slow day at torrentfreak?

  • Zirro

    Couldn’t this be someone who expresses their (negative) opinion about BitTorrent Inc. controlling uTorrent development?

  • lul

    This is why I always will use rtorrent or transmission.

  • warner brothers and bram

    yea the truth comes out

  • SquareWheel

    Jeez, this is news?

  • x

    Queue all the overreacting inbred retards who scream for uTorrent to be banned…

  • Ranon

    Mfw this isn’t news: V.V

  • r3loaded

    Obviously must be some mafia reference if it’s only on the Italian version ;)

  • Alfonso Maruccia

    My take at a somewhat meaningful translation (FYI I’m Italian):

    “Un potente motore con un minuscolo appetito”.

  • Jas

    But in all honestly about this article: the writer is trolling or serious, It doesnt matter. the fact is, he get’s money from doing this

    altho the article is shit

    LOL, I need to find better job too

  • Hom3r

    Isn’t stuff like this why you started Freakbits?

  • MC

    This is news? some guy came in the irc like 2 months ago and told us. Quoth the staff ‘thats pretty funny, but meh’

  • hikaricore

    bored now

  • a nobody

    Maybe it’s a pun and they’re being sarcastic.

  • http://torrentfreak.com Ernesto

    Excuse us for the slow news day folks, but this was planned, so you’ll appreciate the regular posts more ;)

    We have to suck sometimes to excel.

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  • sss

    as much as a i love and fully use utorrent i must have been on their once maybe twice the last 12 months

  • Anonymous

    More wikileaks news would be great.

    Here in the U.K. ( probably the same in U.S.A. ) We don’t get any information on wikileaks or filesharing in general.

    Any news we do get , is just a parrot of the official line.

    You need not , excuse yourself.
    We appeciate your hard work here @ TF.

    Bit like wikileaks ( TF is )
    More news than the mainstream media.(alougth , more niche , relevant to millions)
    I and many , read TF every day because of that.

    *

    Guess this story , is like those , at the end of the news, you know , the “”funny”" story about something random.

    Looking forward to more news.

  • Anonymous

    “We have to suck sometimes to excel.”

    … or is it “we must first suck before we can exhale” :) ?

  • Anonymous

    You got 357 words written on that NON-Story !

    ( I counted )

    ocd strikes again.

  • http://torrentfreak.com Ernesto

    @19

    Agreed, but since we’re a p2p / copyright related blog we stay away from the general Wikileaks news. If we have something unique to add, or a p2p angle we will cover it.

    Since we’re only a two man operation we have to make choices.

    @21

    I started writing <100 words, half of it copied.... true story..

  • hotdog

    lol

  • Anonymous

    Of course it’s a slow news day, its Sunday
    Buy a newspaper and compare Sunday’s issue to Fridays

  • http://neuron2neuron.blogspot.com Ben Jones

    @21 – if you want a LOT of words on a topic, I’m the one for that. I’ve been too busy to contribute usually, but I passed this along to Ernesto. I reckon I could probably get 1000 words from this…

  • Anonymous

    do not want!

  • Anonymous

    uTorrent sucks

    go open source or die

  • jack.ss

    Digital Freudian Slip by uTorrent :D

  • Anonymous

    since we’re a p2p / copyright related blog we stay away from the general Wikileaks news.

    Wikileaks is p2p , litrally.

    The sharing of data “”copyrighted”" or not.

    The current wikileaks story is the biggest current P2P story.
    Probably the biggest ever.

    You CAN’T get a bigger copyright owner , than the U.S.A.
    Who are currently enforcing copyright in the biggest , most agressive manner ever !

  • Anonymous

    should have said…

    The data that wikileaks shares is not news for here.
    Just like the torrents that are uploaded are not.

    It is the fight against copyright.
    the fight to freely share.
    the fight for p2p at the highest level.

  • ~

    Looks like a silly translation error to me? Perhaps an electronic translator was used to make an italian version of the site?

  • L’anonimo uno
  • http://neuron2neuron.blogspot.com Ben Jones

    @29 “You CAN’T get a bigger copyright owner , than the U.S.A.”

    Actually, US government documents are in the public domain, but then there’s classification. Classification is different from copyright.

    Wikileaks is more a topic for political and security blogs (such as Threat Level) than for TorrentFreak.

  • Cujo

    I use Azureus lol

    to the WikiLeaks complainers

    OpenLeaks coming soon ;)

  • PlayBoyMan

    They should change it to “Un app che si ottiene grandi volumi di contenuti per adulti”

  • LOL

    Excuse us for the slow news day folks,

    LMAO

  • Ahem

    All your base are belong to us.
    You have no chance to survive make your time.
    Ha Ha Ha Ha…

  • An0nYm0uS

    Personally I feel that BitTorrent Inc will be what brings the “Mechines” into power and begins the whole Skynet type downfall on humanity…
    Untill that happens… Ill enjoy there workings to assist me in spreading my work.
    Be sure to release that dooms day virus on BT 2012 12 21

  • 2332

    Personally I feel that BitTorrent Inc will be what brings the “Machines” into power and begins the whole Skynet type downfall on humanity
    ^^^
    THIS

  • LimeyBastards

    This was a rather pointless read.

  • Lex

    @29 – Yes, but the US aren’t currently trying to sue Assange for Copyright infringement, exactly, are they?

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  • wandering_bear

    This is pretty funny and I do appreciate the post but the angle is just wrong. No reason for the sensationalistic headline when clearly it’s not really a big deal. Feel free to report it for the community to see, but dont add such a wild title and description: “Is there something evil about BitTorrent Inc. that we don’t know of, or is there a logical explanation?” against a torrent client that you are probably aware has done nothing truly malicious.

    Keep it up otherwise though!

  • Jay

    That’s such an awesome translation. I mean, it’s wrong and all, but it’s interesting to see the words the software chose in its translation.

  • murcan

    @36=turd

    lol indeed you shill

  • L’anonimo uno

    I’m an idiot, I posted the wrong link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4pY3QtiGyo

    I suck at life. :(

  • Daz

    That’s electronic translation for you. It’s like “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” that translated through a foreign language into “the alcohol is strong but the meat is rotten”. In any case, you can’t directly translate tag lines most of the time; you have to get someone local to transcribe the sense of the tag. Tough job!

  • h

    And this is news? Keep it to the important and funny stuff guys, who the fuck cares about a mistranslated slogan

  • Peter Kleissner

    Boring news, and I am visiting TF daily.

  • 2332

    http://www.Newtonslinks.com
    my new site about everything cool

  • Pingback: uTorrent: An Organization With A Slight Craving For Power | Systema

  • Kwork

    Lololol! So what if the story seems pointless. It made me smile. Not everything in life needs to be serious, and with a point, no matter how sharpened or blunt. Some comments just amuse me.

  • Anonymous

    @ 34

    Open leaks with Anonymous people as contributors of leaks? This is going to cause a mess, and people won’t be sure what “leaks” will be true or just biased.

  • me

    It must be an automatic translation of “A Powerhouse With a Tiny Appetite”, which appears on the utorrent frontpage.

    Of course the translation is wrong (I am Italian), but I can imagine some ways of parsing it (eg as “a slight appetite for becoming a powerhouse”) to produce this translated text.

    The correct translation in Italian is “[Un' applicazione] potente e di basso consumo”.

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  • OPXR

    Lol lost in translation I guess.

  • demfan

    ha ha ha ha ha!

  • iFox

    Whats with everyone saying this article sucks? You can’t really say an article sucks just because you didn’t like the subject.

    I thought it was good and I’m glad they reported on it. I thought it was pretty funny.

  • dkong

    Done.

    “Un potente motore con un minuscolo appetito”

    and just like Alfonso at #11 says :)

  • anon

    I tried to suggest utorrent to add a feature but was given wrong answer. When I pointed that out, they said that described behaviour is a bug. When I explained why I think they misunderstood me, and that it is not a bug of utorrent, but a lack of it’s features, but I was ignored. The guy answering the questions was an actual administrator of forum. Many forums have these type of annoying guys running around “answering” wrongly by typing a word or two, and leaving to “one-sentence-spam” some other topic, but I would never expect it from admins of a website such as utorrent.

    Links to it is: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=82252

    Their client is great, their website is a joke.

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  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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