The probable reason online translators failed is interesting: davidst used nonstandard, but phonetic, transliteration. "Skolka" is closer to how it sounds but the normal way of spelling it in English is "skolko". Similarly "speciba" instead of "spasibo". Either he got these out of a traveler's manual or learned how to say them and then spelled them the way they sound.

By the way, people's tendency to misspell things the way they sound is what allows philologists to figure out how proununciation worked in past centuries.