The French translation in the article matches what Google returns today (ie garbage), albeit for one difference (it now translates "in pairs" to "par deux" inst

The French translation in the article matches what Google returns today (ie garbage), albeit for one difference (it now translates "in pairs" to "par deux" instead of "en paires" (which is a slight improvement, but doesn't address the fundamental errors of the translation). The garbage it gives is consistent with the garbage statistical approaches tend to give; particularly when translating from a language without gendered pronouns to a language with them. My favorite, most concise example to demonstrate this is the sentence "my cousin and her wife". Anyone with basic understanding of English grammar would infer that my cousin is a woman married to a woman; Google Translate gives me back a French sentence where suddenly my cousin has become a man. This is a great example of something that a rules based translation system would never get wrong (of course, rules based translation systems have plenty of other shortcomings) and that statistical approaches have a hard time dealing with. See also: https://twitter.com/seyyedreza/status/935291317252493312 https://twitter.com/seyyedreza/status/935291317252493312 https://twitter.com/taikadahlbom/status/935612093906194432 https://twitter.com/taikadahlbom/status/935612093906194432