This assignment is called "Google Translate Fail" by Steven Q. Dangerfist.
Here is the description of the assignment.
So here is what I did:
I put text「今日は雨が降ってます(kyou ha ame ga hutte masu)。」in Japanese.
In English, that means " It is rainig today."
I put this text just because it is rainig today.
The answer I got was
I rainig today??? lol
If you read this weird sentense, you might kinda get a sense what it's about... but this translation is not good...
I knew that Google Translate does not work well, especially between English and Japanese but I did not expect this bad. (worse than my horrible English... :P)
The original sentence was so simple and I thought this couldn't go wrong.
The subject sentence is 今日(today), not 私(I). I have no idea why it translated like this.
Google Translate might be fun to mess up and laugh about but it is not for academic use like many people point out that google translate cannot be depended on :(
Well, I tried a second try changing a little bit of the original sentence.
I rewrote it from spoken language into formal, written Japanese, just adding 「い」.
The result I got was this
Google Translated successfully for this time!! :)
Maybe Google Translate is not so bad???
or is it just an miracle? :P
_________________________
The process of this assignment:
I used Google Translate and tried some translation from Japanese into English. I took these pictures step by step with my iphone and uploaded to Flickr and then embeded here.
Here is the description of the assignment.
Find something in a foreign language and use Google Translate and laugh about how awful it is. Its pretty easy to do if you use Google Chrome. Just go to a site in another language and select the translate to English button when it pops up (options - under the hood - check the box that says to offer translations). I think you can also use the main google.com to translate pages as well. If its a language you know, give an explanation of what it should be and list possible reasons it got messed up.
So here is what I did:
I put text「今日は雨が降ってます(kyou ha ame ga hutte masu)。」in Japanese.
In English, that means " It is rainig today."
I put this text just because it is rainig today.
I rainig today??? lol
If you read this weird sentense, you might kinda get a sense what it's about... but this translation is not good...
I knew that Google Translate does not work well, especially between English and Japanese but I did not expect this bad. (worse than my horrible English... :P)
The original sentence was so simple and I thought this couldn't go wrong.
The subject sentence is 今日(today), not 私(I). I have no idea why it translated like this.
Google Translate might be fun to mess up and laugh about but it is not for academic use like many people point out that google translate cannot be depended on :(
Well, I tried a second try changing a little bit of the original sentence.
I rewrote it from spoken language into formal, written Japanese, just adding 「い」.
「今日は雨が降ってます。」
↓
「今日は雨が降っています。」
The result I got was this
Google Translated successfully for this time!! :)
Maybe Google Translate is not so bad???
or is it just an miracle? :P
_________________________
The process of this assignment:
I used Google Translate and tried some translation from Japanese into English. I took these pictures step by step with my iphone and uploaded to Flickr and then embeded here.
I've been interested in this topic!!
返信削除According to your investigation, we need to put our own correct language at first, and then expect the perfect translate result;)
Thank you for mentioning this topic!!
@Tomomi Thank you for the comment :)
返信削除Yeah it seems like you have to put formal language,more like written language rather than spoken language. This assignment was fun :) Are you thinkig to try this one as well?
when using Google translate one should only use it to read kanji for it can usually help non readers figure out what things say, (my mom read a whole web page like that and i was suppressed she was able to tell me about most of it)
返信削除@TheUnknown thank you for the comment! :)
返信削除as you pointed out, google translate is useful for non readers- I did not think about that when I wrote this blog post! thank you for mentioning that :)
hahaha Google translate always cracks me up!!
返信削除but it also makes me think how hard it is to understand the differences of languages and translate it.
Good job!!! Keep it up!!
@Mika
返信削除thank you for commenting :)
true, it is very difficult to understand the differences of language... I'm always struggling between English and Japanese!
This is such a good post. I have to admit before learning Japanese I was an avid user of Google Translate. I would try to translate my English words to Japanese and send them to friends I met out here. I would always get the same response from all of them saying "did you use Google Translate to write that, because it make no sense." I definitely agree that Google Translate is not the best way to go in trying to have a conversation with someone who has a different dialect. I think you would almost be better off just writing what you have to say in English lol.
返信削除@Hicks-tuj
返信削除yeah google translate is not the best way to use it practically. your friends must have had fun to read those translations though :P