Screwing Up Google Translate

I believe we mentioned before that Google Translate, while the handy tool for both making rudimentary translations and acting as a proxy workaround (when behind corporate firewalls that are too prohibitive). Now it’s time to put to the test the real supposed use of Google Translate, which is just that–to translate text from one language to another.

But instead of expecting things to go smoothly, let’s rely on good ol’ Murphy’s law that something will screw up in the course of our using Google Translate.

The concept is basic. Key in (or paste) any phrase or paragraph in your native tongue, translate it into a foreign language, and then translate it back to your native tongue. So for instance, we can translate something in English into French, and then back again. Let’s see how accurately Google does it.

Let’s try with something simple first.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Translated into French, it becomes:

Le renard brun rapide saute par-dessus le chien paresseux.

Now back to English.

The fast brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Aha! Notice that “quick” now becomes “fast.” Now how can we test our keyboards for defective keys, then?

Next up, let’s try something closer to home: Google’s “about us” text itself.

“Googol” is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google’s play on the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

We translated it into French and back to English, and here’s what we get.

“Googol” is the mathematical term for one 1 follow-up of 100 zeros. The limit was invented by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edouard Kasner, and was popularized in the book, of “mathematics and imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. The play of Google on the limit reflects the mission of company to organize the immense quantity of information available on the Web.

Good enough, except for the substition of “limit” for “term.” Still, this seems satisfactory.

Now it’s usually when you speak expletives when it gets a bit more interesting.

We say,

Die, you son of a _____!

We translate it to French and back, and Google now says:

Stamp, you wire of a _____!

Now we can stop wondering why the French and English went into so many of those wars in the olden times.