We launched our product yesterday and received many comments about machine translation vs. human translation: https://www.producthunt.com/post…
It’s a topic that fascinates me and I’ve been collecting fun machine translation failures for a long time, let me share with you some of my faves š
I speak some Mandarin Chinese and that’s a great language for machine translation failures š
1. There is this Chinese set phrase åé (= to be jealous; literally āto eat vinegarā), and machine translation gets it right. But if we use this phrase in a sentenceā¦ ä½ čæä¼åå儳åēéåļ¼
Oops! This awkward moment when āAre you still jealous of your ex?ā turns into āWill you still eat the vinegar of his ex-girlfriend?ā
2. Another Chinese to English translation example (sorry, didn’t keep the Chinese version, but I do have the Google translate screenshot):
āI hope youāll be beautiful in the futureā. Lol what? The original Chinese phrase said āI hope youāll have a great (ābeautifulā) futureā.
3. One of the key problems is that machine translation often doesn’t get the context. It becomes especially serious if you translate standalone words (like UI or other short strings of text).