Goggle Translate



  • Not sure what's gone wrong this time …

    Trying to translate a Japanese Wikipedia page that contains a lot more content than its English-language counterpart:

    View full-size image

    Google think that it's terribly helpful to tell me that “This page was not retrieved from its original location over a secure connection.” What is that supposed to mean? Does the “Dismiss” button dismiss whoever was responsible for yet another useless message?

    There's a secure connection that refused to hand over the page? I'm banned from translating anything that's not on a secure connection? What? What am I supposed to do with that message? Whose fault is the problem? It's almost as bad as the diabolically dreadful “I could’t give a toss, so go FOAD” passive voice “Document not saved” from Excel, that sends me into murderous rage.

    Something seems to be messed up with Wikipedia too. I figured maybe if I tried HTTPS it would comfort whatever gremlin in Google is deciding I'm not allowed to have my page. Instead I got this:

    View full-size image

    Recursive framesets, yay!

    Depending what you click you can get Google really confused:

    View full-size image

    I'm still no closer to getting a translation of that page.



  • I was about to point out that Google has consistently failed to translate shushpanzer.ru for like a year with no error message, but hey I tried it today and now, inexplicably, it works again.

    Oh wait, it only works on the homepage. It still fails to translate any article page for no fucking reason. And even better, when you try to translate using the icon in Chrome's URL bar, not only does it fail silently with no error message, but then the icon LIES and says it was successfully translated. Derp derp what means "QA????"

    Anyway, yes, Bing translator is far better.



  • Ah, I get it. Google forces me to use HTTPS (via redirecting HTTP to HTTPS), then won't translate any sites that don't use HTTPS!

    However, if you remove the 's' from "https", the translation comes up just fine, without another redirect back to the HTTPS site.

    Basically Google's left and right hands aren't talking — the error message now seems like a sulky retort to whoever it is who's forcing HTTPS when they know full well that this just breaks pretty much every website, hence the lack of blamestorming in the message, since Google Translate is wilfully causing its own problem.

    For Japanese to English itself, Google and Bing are pretty much equally awful. Japanese seems to be monstrously difficult to translate.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    For Japanese to English itself, Google and Bing are pretty much equally awful. Japanese seems to be monstrously difficult to translate.
    Most likely problem there is going to be idiom usage. Idioms are viciously hard to translate (and the best idiom often varies by country too; there's loads in the US that mean effectively nothing to anyone in Europe, even if they're a native english speaker).




  • No repro



  • @dkf said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    For Japanese to English itself, Google and Bing are pretty much equally awful. Japanese seems to be monstrously difficult to translate.
    Most likely problem there is going to be idiom usage. Idioms are viciously hard to translate (and the best idiom often varies by country too; there's loads in the US that mean effectively nothing to anyone in Europe, even if they're a native english speaker).
    No, it's that Japanese tends to leave subjects (and other important things) implied.

    Also, word order. The first line of the article in the screenshot is a word-for-word translation (with only two "mistranslations") with almost no reordering. Japanese is not an SVO language. As a result, all relationships between verbs and their subjects/objects are guaranteed to be messed up.



  • @Vempele said:

    No, it's that Japanese tends to leave subjects (and other important things) implied.

    Also, word order. The first line of the article in the screenshot is a word-for-word translation (with only two "mistranslations") with almost no reordering. Japanese is not an SVO language. As a result, all relationships between verbs and their subjects/objects are guaranteed to be messed up.

    I blame the U.S. We had the opportunity to convert them to a sensible language but we failed.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Japanese seems to be monstrously difficult to translate.
    Fore me, about 3/4 of the way down the Google-translated page everything is in Japanese. Apparently Google Translate got tired and gave up.

    Side note:  There is no actual English page for "PC-8800"  There is a page for "PC-8000 Series" which only mentions the PC-8800 in one sentence:  "the PC-8001 mkII was comparable with other 8-bit computer offerings at the time, its graphics were notably worse than its competitors (most likely an attempt on NEC's part to avoid competing with their own, higher-powered PC-8800 series)."

    The link for "PC-8800 Series" goes to a page called "PC-8801" that is very different from the Japanese PC-8800 page.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I blame the U.S. We had the opportunity to convert them to a sensible language but we failed.

     

    Filed under: Invade their countries‚ kill their leaders and convert them to ASCII.

     

    EBCDIC or die!!



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I blame the U.S. We had the opportunity to convert them to a sensible language but we failed.

     

    Filed under: Invade their countries‚ kill their leaders and convert them to ASCII.

     

    EBCDIC or die!!

    is_the_goddamn_letter_A
    is_the_goddamn_letter_B
    // additional letters omitted due to being useless


  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    For Japanese to English itself, Google and Bing are pretty much equally awful. Japanese seems to be monstrously difficult to translate.

    There's also the Excite ja->en translator. It's written by the Japanese and it doesn't at least use that godawful machine learning style translation which 80% of the time inverts the meaning of the sentence since it suddenly decides to ignore a negation or two.

    @excite said:

    PC-8800 series is the series name of a personal computer which NEC (it transfers to NEC and the back to the NEC home electronics) which was famous for the first-in-a-roll rank of the personal computer big three in the 1980s those days sold.

    ...okay, the quality of that one leaves some to be desired, too. But I must mention that babelfish.altavista.com was the best (free) translator available for Asian languages. Too bad they killed it.

    まあ、なんとかなるだろう



  • @El_Heffe said:

    Fore me, about 3/4 of the way down the Google-translated page everything is in Japanese. Apparently Google Translate got tired and gave up.

    That's normal. It does that for long pages. Reload and it will translate further.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Ah, I get it. Google forces me to use HTTPS (via redirecting HTTP to HTTPS), then won't translate any sites that don't use HTTPS!

    Thanks. That has had me very much puzzled before.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I blame the U.S. We had the opportunity to convert them to a sensible language but we failed.

     

    Filed under: Invade their countries‚ kill their leaders and convert them to ASCII.

     

    EBCDIC or die!!

    Must it be one or the other?  Why can't we have both?

     



  • @Ben L. said:


    No repro

    You're using Chrome, so your address bar is still showing the site you tried to translate.

    The bug is that Google Translate demands HTTPS or death. Going to http://translate.google.com/ redirects me to https://translate.google.com/ — if I remove the "s" in "https", Google puts it back again. Fortunately it doesn't redirect the actual translation URL.

    This causes translation of virtually every single HTTP website to break (99.999% are not HTTPS). I'm finding this constantly now — every site I try to translate just gives me a blank page and that same useless error message.

    My suspicion is that it really isn't an error message. It looks like Google are trying to politely warn you that they couldn't access the page by HTTPS, which seems a strange and pointless remark to make. I mean, you just accessed the website without HTTPS already — are Google trying to be some sort of retarded nanny? It's a page on NEC computers — does reading it make me a terrorist? Are Google trying to look after terrorists?

    What I think happens in Firefox is that the fallback to HTTP fails; i.e. the blank page is a bug. Internet Explorer appears to be handling the situation better with an error page:

    View full-size image

    I suspect Firefox has a similar issue and, possibly, for once, Internet Explorer has the better error handling. Google simply don't care about testing in other browsers.

    Here we go — "Load denied by X-Frame-Options: http://translate.google.com/translate?… does not permit cross-origin framing.":

    View full-size image

    The problem seems to be the meaning of X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN — MSIE and Firefox (which MDN confirms hasn't got around to an error page yet!) disallow framing between HTTPS and HTTP with SAMEORIGIN set. This seems reasonable to me. I know Firefox and MSIE take mixed content very seriously now. I don't know if this is a bug in Chrome, that it's permitting this to occur? RFC 7034 does not actually say whether HTTP and HTTPS should be considered identical or different for the same host.

    Of course, I don't actually know exactly what Chrome is doing here. I mean, Google are the people setting the X-Frame-Options header that's causing this to break in the first place. And what on earth are Google doing with HTTP and HTTPS here anyway? I am not clear what they're trying to do exactly that's wound them up in this mess in the first place.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I am not clear what they're trying to do exactly that's wound them up in this mess in the first place.

    I imagine they're trying to do the same thing they've already done with Google Search i.e. make it completely hostile to school administrators by making the task of filtering their translation pages a difficult and complicated pain in the arse.

    The official "solution" for the only upstream proxy we can use to get web access outside the district VPN is to turn on its SSL MITM attack capability and install its spoof-enabling root cert in all our browsers. I really, really don't want to do that.



  • I remember the first time I encountered a breakdown in the British net nanny — some website used for hosting files too large to e-mail (I forget which) was falling apart due to an SSL certificate error, and this was only occurring on one network.

    The cause turned out to be Thus's IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) proxy handing out its own SSL certificate to anyone accessing this one website, instead of the one for the website in question; naturally this makes browsers extremely anxious. As I understand it, someone had been caught sharing kiddy porn or some such over this service, so the government wanted it scrutinising for a while.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    stuff about Google Translate

    Very nice detective work!

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Google simply don't care about testing in other browsers.

    That's really, really sad. Really, outside of Chrome, Google has not been impressing me lately. Everything they do sucks.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    The goggle, it translates nothing?





  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The problem seems to be the meaning of X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN — MSIE and Firefox (which MDN confirms hasn't got around to an error page yet!) disallow framing between HTTPS and HTTP with SAMEORIGIN set. This seems reasonable to me. I know Firefox and MSIE take mixed content very seriously now. I don't know if this is a bug in Chrome, that it's permitting this to occur? RFC 7034 does not actually say whether HTTP and HTTPS should be considered identical or different for the same host.


    It's a bug in Chrome. Web origins are defined in RFC 6454. Origins are only the same if they have the same scheme, host, and port. I.e. HTTP and HTTPS for the same host are different origins.



  • @thagomizer said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The problem seems to be the meaning of X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN — MSIE and Firefox (which MDN confirms hasn't got around to an error page yet!) disallow framing between HTTPS and HTTP with SAMEORIGIN set. This seems reasonable to me. I know Firefox and MSIE take mixed content very seriously now. I don't know if this is a bug in Chrome, that it's permitting this to occur? RFC 7034 does not actually say whether HTTP and HTTPS should be considered identical or different for the same host.


    It's a bug in Chrome. Web origins are defined in RFC 6454. Origins are only the same if they have the same scheme, host, and port. I.e. HTTP and HTTPS for the same host are different origins.

    Actually, it doesn't appear to be a bug in Chrome (Chrome handles SAMEORIGIN correctly.) Instead, it seems when you're using Chrome Google Translate loads the frames over HTTPS (so it passes SAMEORIGIN) but on Firefox it tries to load one of the frames over HTTP, so it fails.

    So still a pretty huge fail because Google apparently never tested in Firefox.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    So still a pretty huge fail because Google apparently never tested in Firefox.
    But everyone keeps saying Firefox now looks like Chrome, so what's the problem?  It should work, amirite?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @thagomizer said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The problem seems to be the meaning of X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN — MSIE and Firefox (which MDN confirms hasn't got around to an error page yet!) disallow framing between HTTPS and HTTP with SAMEORIGIN set. This seems reasonable to me. I know Firefox and MSIE take mixed content very seriously now. I don't know if this is a bug in Chrome, that it's permitting this to occur? RFC 7034 does not actually say whether HTTP and HTTPS should be considered identical or different for the same host.


    It's a bug in Chrome. Web origins are defined in RFC 6454. Origins are only the same if they have the same scheme, host, and port. I.e. HTTP and HTTPS for the same host are different origins.

    Actually, it doesn't appear to be a bug in Chrome (Chrome handles SAMEORIGIN correctly.) Instead, it seems when you're using Chrome Google Translate loads the frames over HTTPS (so it passes SAMEORIGIN) but on Firefox it tries to load one of the frames over HTTP, so it fails.

    So still a pretty huge fail because Google apparently never tested in Firefox.

    HSTS would dictate that everything on Google's websites be requested over https no matter what. And the article says Firefox supports it. So it's basically a difference in the place in the pipeline where the s is added to the http.

    It's a bug with Translate, though, since it's trying to request a HSTS page over unsecured http.



  • @Ben L. said:

    HSTS would dictate that everything on Google's websites be requested over https no matter what.

    No. HSTS dictates that HTTPS is to be used if the Strict-Transport-Security header is set, which it is not for translate.google.com.

    @Ben L. said:

    It's a bug with Translate, though, since it's trying to request a HSTS page over unsecured http.

    If that was the case, then it would be slightly off, but it would still work. The domain isn't HSTS, though.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Ben L. said:
    HSTS would dictate that everything on Google's websites be requested over https no matter what.

    No. HSTS dictates that HTTPS is to be used if the Strict-Transport-Security header is set, which it is not for translate.google.com.

    @Ben L. said:

    It's a bug with Translate, though, since it's trying to request a HSTS page over unsecured http.

    If that was the case, then it would be slightly off, but it would still work. The domain isn't HSTS, though.



  • @Ben L. said:

    Dude, seriously? This is the second time you've pulled the "Works in Chrome herp-a-derp!" crap in this thread. As has already been stated several times, Chrome works, it's Firefox that does not.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Dude, seriously? This is the second time you've pulled the "Works in Chrome herp-a-derp!" crap in this thread. As has already been stated several times, Chrome works, it's Firefox that does not.

    Is Google using user-agent sniffing to only set HSTS on Firefox? That would be very strange.



  • @immibis said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Dude, seriously? This is the second time you've pulled the "Works in Chrome herp-a-derp!" crap in this thread. As has already been stated several times, Chrome works, it's Firefox that does not.

    Is Google using user-agent sniffing to only set HSTS on Firefox? That would be very strange.

    What? No. Google's not sending HSTS headers at all, from what I can tell. (Even if they were, they'd wouldn't be sending them to Firefox since that's the browser with the problem.)

    They're just relying on being in the "preload" HSTS list for Chrome. Firefox uses that list to create its own HSTS preload list that's compiled into the browser, but google.com isn't marked to use HSTS (although several subdomains are) so Firefox ain't enforcing it on translate.google.com.



  • @immibis said:

    Is Google using user-agent sniffing to only set HSTS on Firefox? That would be very strange.

    Well, consider that's also broken in Internet Explorer (screenshot above). Those are the only browsers I have installed (Firefox 28 and MSIE 10). I should have tried at work in Opera.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @immibis said:
    Is Google using user-agent sniffing to only set HSTS on Firefox? That would be very strange.

    Well, consider that's also broken in Internet Explorer (screenshot above). Those are the only browsers I have installed (Firefox 28 and MSIE 10). I should have tried at work in Opera.

    AFAIK, IE still doesn't support HSTS, even if Google was actually sending headers. Supposedly Opera 12 supports HSTS, but once again, no headers.

    The irony here is that Google was one of the companies that helped create the HSTS standard, and now they're not even sending the damn headers. Magnificent.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    View full-size image

    Shouldn't the IE error page mention that if the user clicks the new-window link, the new window will load over an insecure connection? Most lusers probably couldn't tell you that's why an extra click is needed.



  • Has anyone told Google that Translate could load Wikipedia over HTTPS, if they'd only create an account for it?



  • @Seahen said:

    Has anyone told Google that Translate could load Wikipedia over HTTPS, if they'd only create an account for it?

    1. Why would we bother telling Google how to fix their fuck-ups?

    2. Why would anyone care if it runs over HTTPS or not?

    3. Why do you think Google would bother creating an account for their translation service? Then they'd have to add in all sorts of security measures so people can't hijack the Google Translator account. That's such a PITA suggestion I can only imagine you didn't think it through before stating it.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Seahen said:
    Has anyone told Google that Translate could load Wikipedia over HTTPS, if they'd only create an account for it?

    1. Why would we bother telling Google how to fix their fuck-ups?

    2. Why would anyone care if it runs over HTTPS or not?

    3. Why do you think Google would bother creating an account for their translation service? Then they'd have to add in all sorts of security measures so people can't hijack the Google Translator account. That's such a PITA suggestion I can only imagine you didn't think it through before stating it.



  • @Ben L. said:

    4) this page apparently doesn't exist because I'm not logged in to Wikipedia

    Wait, "WTF" stands for "What The F***"?? I am offended! Good day, sir!



  • @Seahen said:

    Has anyone told Google that Translate could load Wikipedia over HTTPS, if they'd only create an account for it?

    Would it help you if I made some nice pictures of all the websites that don't do HTTPS at all, that can't be translated?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Would it help you if I made some nice pictures of all the websites that don't do HTTPS at all, that can't be translated?
    Watercolors or oil paintings?



  • @dkf said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    Would it help you if I made some nice pictures of all the websites that don't do HTTPS at all, that can't be translated?
    Watercolors or oil paintings?

    Latex, but his only tool to apply the paint is his naked body.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @dkf said:
    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    Would it help you if I made some nice pictures of all the websites that don't do HTTPS at all, that can't be translated?
    Watercolors or oil paintings?

    Latex, but his only tool to apply the paint is his naked body.


    Could be worse. (Possibly NSFW)



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @dkf said:
    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    Would it help you if I made some nice pictures of all the websites that don't do HTTPS at all, that can't be translated?
    Watercolors or oil paintings?

    Latex, but his only tool to apply the paint is his naked body.

    Makes sense. I wouldn't even know how to begin to translate this.




  •  Why are there a regular non-joke picture and quote in your sig?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Ben L. said:
    4) this page apparently doesn't exist because I'm not logged in to Wikipedia

    Wait, "WTF" stands for "What The F***"?? I am offended! Good day, sir!

     

    JOKE NUMBER ONE:  "I'm offended too. Who the fuck uses F*** these days? Fucking assholes."

    {pause for laughter}

    JOKE NUMBER TWO: "We don't want to offend you. Would you be happier if we changed the name of the site to Worse Than Fail?"

    {pause for laughter, applause}

    JOKE NUMBER THREE: A queer, a negro and a jew walk into a bar, but they're turned away at the door because the bar doesn't serve their kind. FINE shouts the queer and opens a gay bar, but there's an outbreak of AIDS and he dies. FINE shouts the blackie, and opens a blackie bar, but there's an outbreak of violence like they do and he is shot and dies. FINE shouts the jew and buys all three bars, levels them to build a synagogue, and the original bar loses his job, his wife divorces him and takes all his money like broads do, and he becomes homeless and dies during the winter of hypothermia. And the next state over implements proper immigration laws, and there's no one dies. (Except the negro, because he crossed state lines without knowing his place)

    {pause for laughter}

    Have a good night, everyone!



  • @dhromed said:

     Why are there a regular non-joke picture and quote in your sig?

    Nuclear annihilation is the funniest joke of all. But, just for you, I have changed it.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Ben L. said:
    4) this page apparently doesn't exist because I'm not logged in to Wikipedia

    Wait, "WTF" stands for "What The F***"?? I am offended! Good day, sir!

     

    snip hilarious comedy

    Have a good night, everyone!
    I am enjoying the veal. I shall not forget to tip my waitress.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    he becomes homeless and dies during the winter of hypothermia.
    Was that before or after the winter of discontent?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    JOKE NUMBER THREE: A queer, a negro and a jew walk into a bar, but they're turned away at the door because the bar doesn't serve their kind. FINE shouts the queer and opens a gay bar, but there's an outbreak of AIDS and he dies. FINE shouts the blackie, and opens a blackie bar, but there's an outbreak of violence like they do and he is shot and dies.

    So, there are three bars. Two are owned by minorities, and the other is owned by Ben L. You don't know which is which, but you pick one to go to. You then call your friend Morbs, who's been to one of them, and reveals which one was the gay bar…



  • @Buttembly Coder said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    JOKE NUMBER THREE: A queer, a negro and a jew walk into a bar, but they're turned away at the door because the bar doesn't serve their kind. FINE shouts the queer and opens a gay bar, but there's an outbreak of AIDS and he dies. FINE shouts the blackie, and opens a blackie bar, but there's an outbreak of violence like they do and he is shot and dies.

    So, there are three bars. Two are owned by minorities, and the other is owned by Ben L. You don't know which is which, but you pick one to go to. You then call your friend Morbs, who's been to one of them, and reveals which one was the gay bar…

    Also, my bar has a goat in it, just in case you like goats.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Buttembly Coder said:
    @Lorne Kates said:
    JOKE NUMBER THREE: A queer, a negro and a jew walk into a bar, but they're turned away at the door because the bar doesn't serve their kind. FINE shouts the queer and opens a gay bar, but there's an outbreak of AIDS and he dies. FINE shouts the blackie, and opens a blackie bar, but there's an outbreak of violence like they do and he is shot and dies.

    So, there are three bars. Two are owned by minorities, and the other is owned by Ben L. You don't know which is which, but you pick one to go to. You then call your friend Morbs, who's been to one of them, and reveals which one was the gay bar…

    Also, my bar has a goat in it, just in case you like goats.

    And cats, because you like cats.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    @Ben L. said:
    @Buttembly Coder said:
    @Lorne Kates said:
    JOKE NUMBER THREE: A queer, a negro and a jew walk into a bar, but they're turned away at the door because the bar doesn't serve their kind. FINE shouts the queer and opens a gay bar, but there's an outbreak of AIDS and he dies. FINE shouts the blackie, and opens a blackie bar, but there's an outbreak of violence like they do and he is shot and dies.

    So, there are three bars. Two are owned by minorities, and the other is owned by Ben L. You don't know which is which, but you pick one to go to. You then call your friend Morbs, who's been to one of them, and reveals which one was the gay bar…

    Also, my bar has a goat in it, just in case you like goats.

    And cats, because you like cats.

    And the menu is in Lojban because he like Lojban.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @HardwareGeek said:
    @Ben L. said:
    @Buttembly Coder said:
    @Lorne Kates said:
    JOKE NUMBER THREE: A queer, a negro and a jew walk into a bar, but they're turned away at the door because the bar doesn't serve their kind. FINE shouts the queer and opens a gay bar, but there's an outbreak of AIDS and he dies. FINE shouts the blackie, and opens a blackie bar, but there's an outbreak of violence like they do and he is shot and dies.

    So, there are three bars. Two are owned by minorities, and the other is owned by Ben L. You don't know which is which, but you pick one to go to. You then call your friend Morbs, who's been to one of them, and reveals which one was the gay bar…

    Also, my bar has a goat in it, just in case you like goats.

    And cats, because you like cats.

    And the menu is in Lojban because he like Lojban.

    And the bar doesn't have any beverages other than tap water because I'm not 21 yet and I don't have a license to sell liquor.


Log in to reply