Google Translate Mistakes

Posted on 13. Oct, 2008 @ 7:14 pm by in Culture Views: 746

Ever use Google Translate to exchange messages with a Japanese friend?

You might want to be a bit more careful next time…

Look at how it translated the following…

「バスの乗客にけがはなかった。」

Google translation…

“The bus passengers were injured in the incident.”

Correct translation…

“No passengers were injured.” Literal translation would be something like… “There were none injured among the bus passengers.”

The difference is like night and day!

- Harvey

  • http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/chris-salzberg/ Chris

    Hi Harvey,

    Google Translate is notoriously bad for Japanese. At this stage, it seems that Infoseek and Excite are much better.

  • Bri

    It doesn’t help that people can submit “corrections” to incorrect translations of words and phrases when you use google to translate a website. I once tried to translate a singer’s page. It translated her name as “TLC” and her song as “No Scrubs”! When you use google, artists turn into other artists!

  • http://www.theeast.org hyung lee

    Hi,

    I am a Chairman of THE EAST Business Newspaper in the UK.
    Is there any chance we could publish your articles in our paper and reintroduce them on our website, of course, with your full credit?

    Many thanks and kind regards,

    Hyung Wook Lee
    Chairman / Editor in Chief
    MBA(Edin)

    THE EAST, The East Asian Monthly Business Newspaper,
    Elephant Consulting Limited, 160 Central Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, KT4 8HQ, UK
    Tel : + 44 (0) 7912 608 321 / Web site: http://www.theeast.org / E mail : info@theeast.org
    Registered in England & Wales, Company No. 6254454

  • http://www.thejapanesepage.com Clay

    Great stuff. I was about to say someone should make a website just about computer Japanese translations… but then I saw Chris’ link (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Ozy/20080916). :)

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