Funny Tales from Google Translate



  • Continuing the discussion from Great Caesar's Host!:
    @Zainab58 said:

    Heh. But seriously, I was referring to the specimens of machine-translated Latin earlier in this thread. I can't say for certain that Google Translate was responsible, but it is the most widely known auto-translator in most circles.

    That got me thinking. Do you have examples where google translate is blatantly wrong?

    My example is translating "Flensburg" (I live in Flensburg, Germany) from Danish into English. The Danish name for "Flensburg" is "Flensborg" but google fails miserably at recognizing the typo and translates "Flensburg" in this case with "Dover". WTF?





  • "Coffee is not tea" -> "Coffee is not coffee".

    "Blowjob in Boston" -> "Gays in Boston"

    And there are probably a few more, mostly owing to the "suggest a translation" option being used for munchkinism. It seems they cleared it up a bit, though.



  • Okay, check this out.

    !badgtrr

    <alias>badgtrbase 10 1 %ioru%
    

    !badgtrbase

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30730112/shocky/badgtrbase.php

    In an <alias> command, %ioru% is the input.
    In a <php> command, the rest of the input is passed to a PHP interpreter with $arg set to the space-separated input and $argc the count of arguments.

    (The unsplit input is availbable through $args.)

    If the input is only a ^, the last message is used as the input. If the input is ^ (nickname), then nickname's last message is used as the input.

    Example

    <Riking> !badgtrr My example is translating "Flensburg" (I live in Flensburg, Germany) from Danish into English.
    <Shocky> For example, I'm English, Danish ( I lived in Flensburg, Germany ) "upgrading " translated.
    <Riking> !badgtrr ^
    <Shocky> For example, if ", but" modern " Danny, (I live in Flensburg ) to translate
    <Riking> !badgtrr ^
    <Shocky> For example, "only" modern " Danny, ( I live in Flensburg ) Services




  • @faoileag said:

    Do you have examples where google translate is blatantly wrong?

    I do have fond memories of a little Japanese story that I once asked google to translate from English to German. For example:

    die Braut und Bräutigam, die Ehe Bindung zu bestätigen, ausgetauscht zwischen sich drei Tassen willen, trinken dreimal aus jede Tasse in Kurven.

    The Kurven is a bonus, and let's not even ask what grammatical function they think ausgetauscht is performing. Instead let's see how long it takes you to figure out willen.

    Depending on how you capitalize the English, "Romans go home" comes out as any of the following: "Et egressi recesserunt a Romanis", "Romans vade in domum tuam", "Romani Ite Domus", "Romans tectoque" or "Domum Romanum". I find this perplexing.



  • Edited actual source code into my comment.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30730112/shocky/badgtrbase.php


  • Banned

    Well @Maciejasjmj that... went exactly as planned?

    Original text:

    "I like big butts and I cannot lie"

    ...8 translations later, Bing gives us:

    "I like big butts and I cannot lie,"



  • @codinghorror said:

    Well @Maciejasjmj that... went exactly as planned?

    Original text:
    "I like big butts and I cannot lie"
    ...8 translations later, Bing gives us:
    "I like big butts and I cannot lie,"


    Apart from @Maciejasjmj using 35 translations, "I like big butts and I cannot lie" is rather simple, since that's basically two very simple sentences linked by the conjunction "and". To translate "I cannot lie" wrong would probably take some real effort.

    But if we take: "Discourse is the future of forum software"

    ...35 translations later, Bing gives us:

    "Stone Avenue tonight wanai new forum software"

    I will now google for that "Stone Avenue" forum software.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I like this.

    "Stack overflow is amazing and provides answers very quickly"

    ...35 translations later, Bing gives us:

    "Black fast you know"

    Somewhere along the way, some really significant chunks of information were lost. But at least the end result is not as [spoiler]racist[/spoiler] as some of the intermediate steps, and is quite a lot more grammatical too.

    (Don't bother trying with the translators other than Bing; they're much lower quality in that words just fail to translate and leak through causing word soup rather than hilarity.)



  • @dkf said:

    But at least the end result is not as [spoiler]racist[/spoiler] as some of the intermediate steps, and is quite a lot more grammatical too.

    You just made me expose myself to racism. :(


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said:

    Stack overflow is amazing and provides answers very quickly

    I blame the Russians.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    This one seems appropriate:

    that doesn't even make sense you retard

    ...35 translations later, Bing gives us:

    Although not a reason ralen.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    This one seems appropriate:

    Some of the best ones appear to involve somewhat circumlocutory speech in the first part.


    "He wore the leaden albatross of mixed metaphor with aplomb."

    "They lost in the first player in the Al."


    Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus.

    "Ninja in the spring, later today. Lord de Wit wax Htm Technical University, Dresden (Germany), Germany Germany North Rhine Germany Italia wetfa Earth"



  • @dkf said:

    > Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus.

    Aaaaarghhh!!!!!!

    @dkf said:

    > Ninja in the spring, later today. Lord de Wit wax Htm Technical University, Dresden (Germany), Germany Germany North Rhine Germany Italia wetfa Earth"

    Ah, so much better after 35 translations!



  • @dkf said:

    Like a ninja in the night, Hanz M., AKA Hanzo, stalks across Hesse University’s Dresden campus.

    @dkf said:

    Ninja in the spring, later today. Lord de Wit wax Htm Technical University, Dresden (Germany), Germany Germany North Rhine Germany Italia wetfa Earth

    Uh oh, Germany is taking over again...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @faoileag said:

    Ah, so much better after 35 translations!

    Yes.

     ""I know," Hanzo replied. "It’s the eternal, unending struggle between the incompetent and the exacerbated." "

     "To ... for me, the answer to electricity production capacity is unlimited and infinite half NATO?"

    Such poetry! Such insight! 😿



  • @faoileag said:

    google fails miserably at recognizing the typo and translates "Flensburg" in this case with "Dover". WTF?

    I can't find the source anymore, but this problem used to be widespread. The reason is that Google Translate is trained on aligned corpora, i.e. groups of texts in different languages. So it sees in one text "My father smokes a pipe" and in the other "Papa fume une pîpe", and marks all possible translations, and in the end weeds out the unlikely ones. In manuals, the company offices are often not literally translated, but replaced by the local office. If there is not enough counter evidence, the learning algorithm memorizes the local place name as a translation of the original one...


  • ♿ (Parody)

    "that is a barrier to reading"

    ...35 translations later, Bing gives us:

    "I have dyslexia."

    This might explain a few things.



  • Hmmm... seems as if so far no @elfpoet has registered with Discourse on TDWTF...



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    Back to English: Lubar Ben bot Markov chain.
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    Back to English: Markov chain, and Ben.
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    To Korean: 마르코프 체인 및 벤입니다.
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    To Japanese: マルコフ連鎖とベン。
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    To Greek: Αλυσίδες Markov και Ben.
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    To Bulgarian: Марков вериги и Бен.
    Back to English: Markov chains and Ben.
    To Danish: Markov kæder og Ben.
    Back to English: Markov chains and legs.
    To Hebrew: שרשרות מרקוב, רגליים.
    Back to English: Markov chains, legs.
    To Turkish: Markov zincirleri, bacaklar.
    Back to English: Markov chains, legs.
    To Thai: Markov โซ่ ขา
    Back to English: Markov chain legs.
    To German: Markov Kette Beine.
    Back to English: Markov chain legs.
    To Chinese Simplified: 马尔科夫链的双腿。
    Back to English: Markov chain legs.
    To Slovenian: Markov verige noge.
    Back to English: Markov chain legs.
    To Dutch: Markov-keten benen.
    Back to English: Markov-chain legs.
    To Norwegian: Markov-kjeden ben.
    Back to English: Markov-chain legs.
    To Slovak: Markov-reťazec nohy.
    Back to English: Markov-chain legs.
    To Czech: Markovský řetězec nohy.
    Back to English: A Markov chain legs.
    To Hungarian: Markov-lánc lábak.
    Back to English: Markov chain legs.
    To Romanian: Picioare lanţ Markov.
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    To Polish: Markov łańcucha nogi.
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    To Estonian: Markovi ahel jalad.
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    Back to English: Markov oak trees.
    To Indonesian: Pohon ek Markov.
    Back to English: Oak Markov.


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