Why shy of Google?

There is such a translation symptom as shyness. This is when the translation is generally correct, but too restrained, standard, adhering to the most conservative, most common options, although the source text may be bolder and more original. Such a translation will be correct lexically, but stylistically incorrect.

Looking at the new social network Google+ (which I generally like very much), I’m trying to understand what prevented Russian Google users from using the same bold and bright names as in the English version. What made it difficult to translate Sparks as Flash? But no, we got dry and unmemorable Themes. But there is even an icon made in the form of a flash. Now this visual-semantic connection is lost.

Why is Stream - Stream - turned into a boring Tape? We believe that the word "stream" the user will not understand? This term is far from as rare as it may seem. We have long had streaming video and audio, bitstream, there are streams on exams at institutes, in many other places. And now there are two tapes in Russian Google+: Buzz and simply Buzz, which can confuse a user, especially a beginner.
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The word Buzz, which could be referred to as din, hum, buzz or buzzing, again turned into a banal ribbon. Oh yes, it is not simple, but alive, but it is still not as funny as in the original, and the meaning is different.

The mute this post option has turned into “hide the message”. The English-speaking user drowns out the annoying noise in his tape, as he drowns out the TV when you need to talk on the phone by pressing the mute button on the remote control. Very original and appropriate metaphor. A Russian-speaking user just hides something - the standard paradigm of the interface of operating systems.

Huddle is a meeting or a fuss. It is interesting, it is remembered. There is no Russian language in the mobile version yet, but judging by the official announcement , it will be translated as ... just “chat”. Here I just keep quiet. In a sign of mourning.

Google translators cannot be blamed for incompetence or illiteracy. But they are embarrassed to be as sparkling and original as their American counterparts. They are like elderly aunts in thick glasses from the faculty of foreign languages, who have seen the Internet for the first time in their lives and carefully check every term in the thick Soviet vocabulary. If they come up with a good option, they are embarrassed to use it, as if they are afraid that they will not be understood or laughed at. But I have not yet seen in the English-language blogosphere for someone to make fun of Google for the original names. Throw out a thick dictionary, gentlemen (or ladies). The lexicon of social media is formed according to completely different patterns. Social media is not a programming textbook for fifth year students. These are sites on which ordinary people sit, most often young and funny. So have fun with them! Especially since your American bosses, who still pay you a salary, have been doing this for a long time.