Google admits its translation engines are not perfect and not yet ready for "sensitive debates"
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If Google Translate really is better than all the others, then I’d say machine translation is pretty useless.
Two years ago, I happened to come across a blog entry whose author was using Google Translate (I had the suspicion, I tried to test my theory by doing a translation in Google Translate, and what I got from Google Translate matched what I saw). A sentence in English had been translated to something in Chinese with the exact opposite meaning.
So I’ve just... See more If Google Translate really is better than all the others, then I’d say machine translation is pretty useless.
Two years ago, I happened to come across a blog entry whose author was using Google Translate (I had the suspicion, I tried to test my theory by doing a translation in Google Translate, and what I got from Google Translate matched what I saw). A sentence in English had been translated to something in Chinese with the exact opposite meaning.
So I’ve just repeated the experiment, and Google Translate is still translating my little test sentence to something that means the exact opposite of what it is supposed to mean, even though the grammatical structure in question is quite simple and common (use of “do” for emphasis).
I would say this kind of translation is pretty unreliable.
[Edited at 2011-01-26 00:11 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray 
荷兰
Local time: 23:06
正式会员 (自2006)
English英语译成Afrikaans南非语
+ ...
| Typical of journalists to skew the facts | Jan 26, 2011 |
Heading: Google *admits*
Body text: Google *warns*
People who don't read the body text but merely glance at the headings will get an entirely different idea of what had really happened. This is worse than what happens when people get the wrong messagse when they read a machine translation instead of a human translation.
| | | | | GT and negative forms | Jan 26, 2011 |
Ambrose Li wrote:
A sentence in English had been translated to something in Chinese with the exact opposite meaning.
So I’ve just repeated the experiment, and Google Translate is still translating my little test sentence to something that means the exact opposite of what it is supposed to mean, even though the grammatical structure in question is quite simple and common (use of “do” for emphasis).
I would say this kind of translation is pretty unreliable.
[Edited at 2011-01-26 00:11 GMT]
This issue happens in other languages I think, even though I do not know if this is due to the same cause as in Chinese,
In ENFR at least, I've made the test several times and GT often misses the negative forms.
Indeed the result is that the automated translation says exactly the opposite of the source.
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Samuel Murray wrote:
Heading: Google *admits*
Body text: Google *warns*
People who don't read the body text but merely glance at the headings will get an entirely different idea of what had really happened.
Couldn't agree more!
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| Google translate can be harmful to your health | Jan 26, 2011 |
There was a great article in this month's Chronicle by Nicholas Hartmann in which he suggested the following:
"...Consider a one-paragraph medical report that has been translated into English. The concluding phrase of the translation reads: "..., the review group unanimously recommends that Mr. N not be subjected to a complete frontal lobotomy." If that entire 100-word paragraph contained only a single error involving one letter of one word, the translation could still be considered more t... See more There was a great article in this month's Chronicle by Nicholas Hartmann in which he suggested the following:
"...Consider a one-paragraph medical report that has been translated into English. The concluding phrase of the translation reads: "..., the review group unanimously recommends that Mr. N not be subjected to a complete frontal lobotomy." If that entire 100-word paragraph contained only a single error involving one letter of one word, the translation could still be considered more than 99% accurate, but if the error resulted in the word "not" being changed to "now", the result would also be 100% wrong. If the person sending the translated report to the surgeon were unable to read English, that tiny but pivotal mistake would go completely undetected..."
And those of us who have experimented with GT, have seen how it sometimes misses a negative. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
法国
Local time: 23:06
French法语译成German德语
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| Lots of them... | Jan 26, 2011 |
Aude Sylvain wrote:
This issue happens in other languages I think, even though I do not know if this is due to the same cause as in Chinese,
In ENFR at least, I've made the test several times and GT often misses the negative forms.
Indeed the result is that the automated translation says exactly the opposite of the source.
The same applies to FR>DE, DE>FR and EN>DE. One should not use GT for translating legal documents, for example, or for any kind of longish sentences.
| | | | S E (X)
意大利
Local time: 23:06
Italian意大利语译成English英语
| Lots and lots of them, so it appears (add ITA>ENG to the list) | Jan 26, 2011 |
Laurent KRAULAND wrote: Aude Sylvain wrote:
This issue happens in other languages I think, even though I do not know if this is due to the same cause as in Chinese,
In ENFR at least, I've made the test several times and GT often misses the negative forms.
Indeed the result is that the automated translation says exactly the opposite of the source. The same applies to FR>DE, DE>FR and EN>DE. One should not use GT for translating legal documents, for example, or for any kind of longish sentences.
It is the same with Italian into English. The program misses negatives, but also mangles positives. My experience with it is with the results of a survey given to Italian doctors about the quality of medical equipment used in hospitals and particularly emergency departments. Almost without exception, whenever a doctor states that a product is good at something, this is mysteriously translated as that product being bad at that thing. And when a doctor states that a product is bad, it is translated into being good. This would be amusing (i.e., this product is reliable because it breaks frequently), except that it is to do with life-saving medical equipment.
And more importantly, my mildly humorous example above is clearly nonsense, but a greater number of the reversed negatives/reversed positives do not betray the fact that they are mistranslations.
[Edited at 2011-01-26 15:49 GMT]
| | | | | At least we now know why | Jan 27, 2011 |
I have always wondered why GT is mistranslating such common things as dates, times, indirect questions, and our friend the emphatic “do”. So at least we now know why: If GT is using statistical analysis to do the translation, then it’s clear that there’s no way it will ever be able to translate everything correctly.
[Edited at 2011-01-27 06:01 GMT]
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Helena Marko
斯洛文尼亚
Local time: 23:06
English英语译成Slovenian斯洛文尼亚语
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| Google Translate is good for your health - it makes you laugh! | Jan 27, 2011 |
Google Translate is so useless for translations into/from Slovene that a translator can use it as a source of entertainment while doing the real thing 
I think this is excellent. It leaves that little work that we have over here to us, humans
[Edited at 2011-01-27 18:25 GMT]
[Edited at 2011-01-27 18:26 GMT]
| | | | | GT translate is harmful when used by people without brains | Jan 29, 2011 |
Admittedly GT has a problem with negations. I have seen it myself.
But GT is not a brain replacement. It can be used by people with brains.
PB
| | | | | Benefits to those financially unblessed | Jan 30, 2011 |
Many users cannot pay high fee for good translation/interpretation. Increasing roles of Google Translate to them are noteworthy. MT can be a laughing material but a very critical tool to many users in this computerized epoch. Let's seek cleverly (e.g. similar to how to use of Google Internet Search) how it can help use, the professional linguists.
Soonthon Lupkitaro
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I hope the people who feed KudoZ questions into Google Translate and then post completely wrong answers are reading this!
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| Worthless Without A Professional to Correct the Results... but not Worthless | Feb 1, 2011 |
I was very skeptical about GT4T and other such tools, but I gave it a chance. Now, it certainly is not going to render human translators obsolete, but it can increase productivity, and it is surprisingly good at translating simple texts. The translated text must be carefully compared to the original, and a professional translator is necessary for this task, but if it can boost productivity by even 10%, that can mean a big difference at the end of a month or year. Now, a good translator will als... See more I was very skeptical about GT4T and other such tools, but I gave it a chance. Now, it certainly is not going to render human translators obsolete, but it can increase productivity, and it is surprisingly good at translating simple texts. The translated text must be carefully compared to the original, and a professional translator is necessary for this task, but if it can boost productivity by even 10%, that can mean a big difference at the end of a month or year. Now, a good translator will also review to vary the style and introduce stylistic touches. But even with this task it can be worth using it. It is far from replacing the translator, but it can be a powerful tool. ▲ Collapse
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Lost in (automatic) translation
| | | | Lingua 5B
波斯尼亚黑塞哥维纳
Local time: 23:06
正式会员 (自2009)
English英语译成Croatian克罗地亚语
+ ...
| Not sure about Chinese | Feb 2, 2011 |
Ambrose Li wrote:
I have always wondered why GT is mistranslating such common things as dates, times, indirect questions, and our friend the emphatic “do”. So at least we now know why: If GT is using statistical analysis to do the translation, then it’s clear that there’s no way it will ever be able to translate everything correctly.
[Edited at 2011-01-27 06:01 GMT]
...and generally I can't really talk about Asian languages as they have totally different language systems.
In my language, and most Euro languages, GT will do well on the level of very simple short clauses consisting only of subject and predicate ( for SVO languages). Also, it won't fail with very common words from objective reality or with common grammatical tendencies. Same goes for simple noun phrases.
However, if you have idiomatic sentence or if sentence is expanding further than this, the problems and twisted meanings begin.
Of course this doesn't mean it's 100% reliable in the former case either, it just means that it will mostly give an accurate result.
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