Google translate is sometimes wrong?

Discussion in 'Writing Software and Hardware' started by Mans, Feb 8, 2014.

  1. Poziga

    Poziga Contributor Contributor

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    I agree with both of you of course, Cogito and Wreybies, I'm not that worried, I just gave this link to show that there are people working hard in this direction. :) Translators should always use the best available dictionaries, corpuses etc. Every single professor has always dissuadied us from using Google translate and I think that every person who ever used the mentioned translator, discovered that it's better to use dictionaries. :)

    The translations are very expensive, the books as whole maybe not so much, but documents and legal contracts are, even 50€ a page. So if a program like this would be released, it is possible that people would rather use a program than hire a professional translator. Here of course, are then questions if this platform would be free, which i doubt...

    But I think this is quite an extreme example, companies, courts and corporations are usually the ones who need to have documents and contracts translated, civilians not so much and since contracts are important, I'm quite sure they would hire a professional to translate them. :) I would find a person, that used programs and not interpereters for translating medicine texts, quite a fool. As for being the court interpreter, you have to make a proper exam and if you succeed, you are employed 24/7. They can call you anytime they want and you can't turn their request down. It's against the law to decline, you can be punished if you do that.... I quite doubt that a person of that importance would be swapped with a machine/program in the near future. :)

    @Mans, sorry for a little diversion in your thread. :)
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2014
  2. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    I'm actually more interested in this error, because I can't figure out what you were trying to say here. There are lots of words you could mean, but none of them are analogous to "expand" or "grow"

    I have some Persian friends who might be able to help, but I don't know any of them well enough to just call them up and ask. I might bring it up at the next Baha'i feast.
     
  3. Mans

    Mans Contributor Contributor

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    So let me I myself write more vivid :

    " I wanted to develop the story, but as I was in a hurry, I couldn't do that."
     
  4. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I think some of my students use Google Translate to translate their work, which is nothing short of painful to read. If I come across some foreign sentence or word and I had to use GT for one reason or another, I usually translate it to English because the Finnish translation is bound to be all wrong. Some languages just seem to "translate better."
    I think it's best to talk to a native speaker in these cases, if at all possible.
     
  5. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    Google often translates wrong. I thought this was well known.
     
  6. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    not really 'archaic' as it's still a current term in military jargon... and in some sports and martial arts fields as well, where one would 'rush' the opponent... so, it's more a 'specialized' usage, i'd say...
     
  7. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    Actually the Bing translator has been an invaluable resource for me, because my Klingon isn't very good.
     
  8. Robert_S

    Robert_S Senior Member

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    Bringing back the thread because I came across a case of translation lobotomy.

    Warning: Contains foul language, but it's not mine.






























    [​IMG]
     
  9. Komposten

    Komposten Insanitary pile of rotten fruit Contributor

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    Not sure if this will add anything to the thread, but I've heard somewhere that Google Translate tend to translate everything via English, no matter what languages you choose. So translating from German to Spanish would mean that it translates from German to English and then to Spanish. Since it can't properly translate from English to other languages (or vice versa) this means that the translations are getting even more messed up (though I suppose it is easier to do it this way than having an algorithm for every combination of languages you can think of).
     
  10. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    not to start a religious debate, but the best worst example of that is the bible, having been translated first from aramaic [most likely], then subjected to a slew of subsequent language translations, before finally ending up in english...
     
  11. Jack Asher

    Jack Asher Banned Contributor

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    30 seconds of google shows that this is not true.
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/12/09/does-google-translate-go-fromto-english-before-translating-fromto-the-language-ive-chosen/

    If you even think about it for a second it's a terrible idea, because English doesn't use any gendered prepositions or gendered nouns. And we left of formal/informal addresses nearly 400 years ago. If you translated from any (that is most) language that has these into English and out again you would constantly run into problems.
     
    Komposten likes this.

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