> in truth it's like 10 times more likely to just make complete shit up if it doesn't understand the source I use this to learn German. Instead of translating

> in truth it's like 10 times more likely to just make complete shit up if it doesn't understand the source I use this to learn German. Instead of translating a text EN->DE and not practicing any writing skills, I'll write my best attempt at German and see if it's understandable by running it through the DE->EN or DE->NL translator. (In cases where I care about the quality, I'll then patch up the English/Dutch if necessary, run it NL/EN->DE, and use that version.) For this purpose, I'm glad that it makes a best guess at what my broken German must mean, and it usually does a fair job (easy to say because I know what I meant, so no validation issues there). Of course this is not great for every use-case, for example it would be better if it additionally displayed confidence (e.g. slightly graying out subsentences below 80% confidence), but it also has advantages to make a good guess at the meaning of the source. And when I put in something unintelligible, unintelligible stuff comes out. It's not really just making something up, at least not in my experience with EN/DE/NL. No idea what happened there with that Japanese example.