Google Translate Sucks Never, EVER rely on it.

[jaychant 0]

OK, so I'm in Japanese class, and for practice I wrote a story. The original story was written in Japanese and proofread by my teacher, who is very fluent (I assume it's because his wife is Japanese ). Anyways, after I typed the story, I thought I would feed it through Google Translate, and like I expected, it came out as a complete mess.

In case you're interested, I uploaded the original (Japanese) story. It also has an approximate (actually, almost exact, to my knowledge) translation of what it says.

Now here's what Google Translate spits out when I put in my story:

大NARU dragon was not long ago. HAISHIMASHITA sovereign country and the size. My name was not Conroy大NARU dragon. Conroy's tenure was YUUMINHASHIAWASEDESHITA SOSHITEJI. But one day, and to do the same YAAKUNAMAJUTSUSHIHA Conroy. KOROSHIMASHITA quickly everybody. Later, a confrontation Conroy. Conroy, "Who are you? What are the best!" Asked. YUTSUSHIHA mean "I am a SERAFATIZU, and I can GUATARASHIIOUSAMAGAIMASU!" He said. Conroy, "You will never MAIMASU the king!" He said, and began to struggle. SERAFATIZU attack was quitting, but was quick Conroy. SERAFATIZU KAWASHIMASHITA of the attack. Conroy has become so valuable. SERAFATIZU it was clever. USHIMASHITA a blend of dark energy in the daughter Amber Conroy. So ISAMASHIKU Conroy went to the whereabout of dark energy. ATARIMASHITA injuries and was in dark energy. Conroy, "he Amber IMA is stolen!" He said. Amber is SHITAGAIMASHITA. KAKUREMASHITA TOBIMASHITA and the mountain. 50 Amber and the dragon has become a year posting a tone up. Now, Amber is a vindictive MOTOMERIMASU, TORIMODOSHIMASU the kingdom of the father, not to let our IKIKAERA.

As you can see, Google Translate didn't even come close and actually left some parts untranslated. In fact, it leaves a kanji completely untouched (大 [dai], meaning big or in this case great). Other than that, all the words you see in all caps are untranslated Japanese words. One of them makes sense and is completely understandable: SERAFATIZU is Seraphatis, and this is understandable because Seraphatis isn't a real word or name. Other than that, it is still a complete mess. You can see when comparing my translation and Google's translation that Google in many parts takes a completely different meaning.

In conclusion, never trust automatic translation. It doesn't work. Only trust humans who can actually translate.

Another thing of note:
If you type in "dragon" and translate to Japanese, you get this　as the top translation: 龍
Technically this is correct. The kanji means dragon. However, it is an old outdated kanji that is not used anymore, in the same way that we don't say "thou" anymore. The correct kanji would be: 竜 (which it shows as the second possibility)
Yet another example of why not to trust Google Translate.

amberstory_jpn.doc

Edited May 6, 2009 by jaychant (see edit history)

[webishqiptar 0]

I tried it several times, but did not work. Very weak translation tool, but it is still in beta release. I have heard of some other software, lec power translator, but I am not sure if it works for albanian language. I use dictionary Lingvosoft and it works really fine, but I need a good sentence translator. Let's wait for their full release and see the results.

[jaychant 0]

I tried it several times, but did not work. Very weak translation tool, but it is still in beta release. I have heard of some other software, lec power translator, but I am not sure if it works for albanian language. I use dictionary Lingvosoft and it works really fine, but I need a good sentence translator.
Let's wait for their full release and see the results.

All automatic translation tools are weak. It seems that they can never be as good as human translators. But who knows? Maybe some day in the future, we'll be able to actually teach machines a language. That will be when machine translation starts to work. But it will also be when the machines start to take over...

What do you mean you "tried it several times"?
Edited May 7, 2009 by jaychant (see edit history)

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

It may not work well for languages in symbols, but I can tell you that Google Translation works well with Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Many times I go on sites that are in a language other than English, and the Google Translation works fine. Of course it is no substitute for a human translation, but (at least for me) it works fine.

[jaychant 0]

It may not work well for languages in symbols, but I can tell you that Google Translation works well with Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Many times I go on sites that are in a language other than English, and the Google Translation works fine. Of course it is no substitute for a human translation, but (at least for me) it works fine.

Umm... I hate sounding like such a dork, but Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, etc writing are not "symbols" anymore than our alphabet is.

Yes, translation systems can get the message across and can be understood. But they still suck, badly. My point is, like you said, it is no substitution for human translation.　There are some cases where the translation is totally inaccurate (like above), especially when slang or other unstructured language is used.

There's a funny site called engrish.com that shows bad translations of meaning into English (usually in China ). I'd bet that a lot of those are a result of automatic translation, because the inaccuracies found there is almost identical to the inaccuracies you find in a translation system like Google Translate.
Edited May 7, 2009 by jaychant (see edit history)

[alexthemans 0]

OK, so I'm in Japanese class, and for practice I wrote a story. The original story was written in Japanese and proofread by my teacher, who is very fluent (I assume it's because his wife is Japanese ). Anyways, after I typed the story, I thought I would feed it through Google Translate, and like I expected, it came out as a complete mess.
In case you're interested, I uploaded the original (Japanese) story. It also has an approximate (actually, almost exact, to my knowledge) translation of what it says.

Now here's what Google Translate spits out when I put in my story:


As you can see, Google Translate didn't even come close and actually left some parts untranslated. In fact, it leaves a kanji completely untouched (大 [dai], meaning big or in this case great). Other than that, all the words you see in all caps are untranslated Japanese words. One of them makes sense and is completely understandable: SERAFATIZU is Seraphatis, and this is understandable because Seraphatis isn't a real word or name. Other than that, it is still a complete mess. You can see when comparing my translation and Google's translation that Google in many parts takes a completely different meaning.

In conclusion, never trust automatic translation. It doesn't work. Only trust humans who can actually translate.

Another thing of note:
If you type in "dragon" and translate to Japanese, you get this　as the top translation: 龍
Technically this is correct. The kanji means dragon. However, it is an old outdated kanji that is not used anymore, in the same way that we don't say "thou" anymore. The correct kanji would be: 竜 (which it shows as the second possibility)
Yet another example of why not to trust Google Translate.

As recent translation service/applications lack Artificial Intelligence, do not expect the translation outcome. Your title are right, but I think it can be expanded to: "never rely on ANY translation service or software", at least now.

[minimcmonkey 0]

No translator works very accurately. This is because writing an applications capable of understanding a human language is near impossible.The translations you get are pretty much word for word, literal translations. The programes are incapable of working out what order the words should be in, because that would mean creating an application which fully understood how the language worked...

[mahesh2k 0]

I don't get this. you rely on service which is free and blame when it fails in some situations?thats rude. i know japenese and i know translating script isn't childs play. but that service works well with spanish,german. some limitations are there with all languages, but it is free and works most of time. if you want accuracy,how about spending few dollars?

[Tramposch 1]

Translators are not really supposed to be good. They are usually free, robotic dictionaries that often just directly translate the words using a dictionary.

 

If you want true translations, try a human translator, or something of the sort.

 

 

YAY 700th POSTS!

Edited August 29, 2009 by Tramposch (see edit history)

[Nameless_ 1]

OK, so I'm in Japanese class, and for practice I wrote a story. The original story was written in Japanese and proofread by my teacher, who is very fluent (I assume it's because his wife is Japanese ). Anyways, after I typed the story, I thought I would feed it through Google Translate, and like I expected, it came out as a complete mess.

 

In case you're interested, I uploaded the original (Japanese) story. It also has an approximate (actually, almost exact, to my knowledge) translation of what it says.

 

Now here's what Google Translate spits out when I put in my story:

 

 

As you can see, Google Translate didn't even come close and actually left some parts untranslated. In fact, it leaves a kanji completely untouched (大 [dai], meaning big or in this case great). Other than that, all the words you see in all caps are untranslated Japanese words. One of them makes sense and is completely understandable: SERAFATIZU is Seraphatis, and this is understandable because Seraphatis isn't a real word or name. Other than that, it is still a complete mess. You can see when comparing my translation and Google's translation that Google in many parts takes a completely different meaning.

 

In conclusion, never trust automatic translation. It doesn't work. Only trust humans who can actually translate.

 

Another thing of note:

If you type in "dragon" and translate to Japanese, you get this　as the top translation: 龍

Technically this is correct. The kanji means dragon. However, it is an old outdated kanji that is not used anymore, in the same way that we don't say "thou" anymore. The correct kanji would be: 竜 (which it shows as the second possibility)

Yet another example of why not to trust Google Translate.

I thought that the dragon word IS right... because my teacher wrote that too... but anyway...

I've never really used the Google translater before... I don't really know why though. Just didn't really appeal to me. I mostly use Babelfish... But I think it's rather similar anyway. They don't actually change the words that they don't know...

 

So it's the same, though in my opinion Babelfish is actually better than Google because everyone uses it and it has more translating capability than Google, if you know what I mean. I mean, they translate more than Google... so in those speech brackets that you use where Google merely changed it to English and capatalized it, Babelfish will actually change those words that they put in there too... just thought that you would like to know that... But anyway...

 

By the way, this is AltaVista Babelfish that I'm talking about. This is a translation comparison in French of the two if anyone is interested...

 

Original French: D√Žs qu'il fut dehors, Pierre se dirigea vers la rue de Paris, la principale rue du Havre, √Šclair√Še, anim√Še, bruyante. L'air un peu frais des bords de mer lui caressait la figure, et il marchait lentement, la canne sous le bras, les mains derri√Žre le dos. Il se sentait mal √ l'aise, alourdi, m√Šcontent comme lorsqu'on a re√ßu quelque f√˘cheuse nouvelle. Aucune pens√Še pr√Šcise ne l'affligeait et il n'aurait su dire tout d'abord d'o√π lui venait cette pesanteur de l'√˘me et cet engourdissement du corps. Il avait mal quelque part, sans savoir o√π; il portait en lui un petit point douloureux, une de ces presque insensibles meurtrissures dont on ne trouve pas la place, mais qui g√nent, fatiguent, attristent, irritent, une souffrance inconnue et l√Šg√Žre, quelque chose comme une graine de chagrin.

 

(I'm sorry... for some reason some of the french words are in symbols)

 

AltaVista Babelfish: As soon as it was outside, Pierre moved towards the street of Paris, the principal street of Le Havre, lit, animated, noisy. The a little fresh air of the edges of sea cherished the figure to him, and it went slowly, the cane under the arm, the hands behind the back. It was smelled badly at ease, weighed down, dissatisfied like when one received some annoying news. No thought specifies did not afflict it and it would not have known to say first of all from where this gravity came to him from the heart and this numbness from the body. It had some share badly, without knowing where; it carried in him a small painful point, one of these almost insensitive bruises which one does not find the place, but which obstructs, tire, sadden, irritate, an unknown and light suffering, something like a seed of sorrow.

 

Google Translate: When he was outside, Pierre went to the streets of Paris, the main street of Le Havre, lighted, busy, busy. The air of a little fresh seashores figure caressed him, and he walked slowly, cane under his arm, hands behind their backs. He felt uncomfortable weight, as unhappy when received some disturbing news. No precise thought it sad and knew he would say first of all that this was due gravity of the soul and the numbness of the body. He had badly somewhere without knowing where; He wore it a little painful point, one of these almost insensitive bruises which are not found instead, but the way, tired, sadden, irritate, suffering and unknown slight, some something like a seed of sorrow.

 

And this is the REAL human translation:

 

English (human translation): As soon as he got out, Pierre made his way to the Rue de Paris, the high-street of Havre, brightly lighted up, lively and noisy. The rather sharp air of the seacoast kissed his face, and he walked slowly, his stick under his arm and his hands behind his back. He was ill at ease, oppressed, out of heart, as one is after hearing unpleasant tidings. He was not distressed by any definite thought, and he would have been puzzled to account, on the spur of the moment, for this dejection of spirit and heaviness of limb. He was hurt somewhere, without knowing where; somewhere within him there was a pin-point of pain -- one of those almost imperceptible wounds which we cannot lay a finger on, but which incommode us, tire us, depress us, irritate us -- a slight and occult pang, as it were a small seed of distress.

 

As you can see... they are both quite wrong and not right... so the best translator is a human one!!!

Hehe...

[Spudd 0]

Yes, Google Translator is terrible for grammar and such, but really, the alternatives aren't much better. It's hard because there are so many words that don't have a direct translation to another language. At the same time, there are so many words with multiple meanings. At the very least Google Translator can get the meaning across most of the time, which is still very useful when you want to use a foreign site and don't speak the language.

[nolan 0]

I'm going to have to second this. For many languages (and compared to other free translation services), Google translate performs exceptionally well. There was a time a few years back when I used Babel fish's free translation services and I can remember typing a sentence in, translating it to another language, and then translating the result back to the original language and seeing something with a completely different meaning. With Google I (personally) have not encountered this problem to any considerable degree.

It may not work well for languages in symbols, but I can tell you that Google Translation works well with Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Many times I go on sites that are in a language other than English, and the Google Translation works fine. Of course it is no substitute for a human translation, but (at least for me) it works fine.

[Quatrux 4]

I guess those automatic translators don't need to be very accurate as currently it's almost impossible, but for being free it's quite good, you can translate some kind of a content and at least understand what the hell that article is talking about, it's not like you translate your article and want it to be well spelled..Sometimes humans who translate for money can make mistakes and you want a free service to work better? :)Google translate is quite powerful as many times as I used to, it's not only translating a word into another word, it is trying to do different combinations to be more correct, but usually you need to fix a lot, but I guess it's just needed for you to understand the content you're translating and do the rest job yourself.

[iGuest 3]

I think Google translate sucks too cause I am Korean (but I speak English too) and I typed this Korean sentence and it was such a mess.