3 ms·

I'm surprised that the quality isn't too bad. Sure, the grammar is way off but you can actually understand what they are trying to say.

sliverstorm 11y ago
I find how well that works is directly related to how closely related English is to the language in question. The further you get from its Germanic and Latin roots, the proportionally less sense a rough translation makes. Some of that is figures of speech, some of it is colloquialisms, some of it is just weird grammar. For example, Japanese tends to omit the subject, which is incredibly confusing when directly translated if you aren't expecting it.
- gerbal 11y ago
  Germany newspapers apparently use weird grammar conventions that makes translation engines have fits. Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. The translation of the above article is pretty good because a number of people have looked at it and made corrections, but the average German Newspaper article translation is nearly incomprehensible.
  - dvdkhlng 11y ago
    > Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. AFAIK Google translate is trained by using corpora of documents that have known-good translations. I could imagine that they are trained using EU documents, as these would usually be available in multiple languages. That would explain why performance on stuff published by the EU is so good...
  - eru 11y ago
    > anything the EU publishes, [...] Google Translate grew up on EU parliamentary publications.
- uqbartlon 11y ago
  I think german grammar is really diferent from english. For example they make a sandwich with verbs. For example: I have been in Berlin. vs I have in Berlin been. Its not the exact translation and maybe theres a beter example but its the idea. Ich bin in berlin gewessen. There is also all the declinations. But yeah its noy japanese.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    See, "I have in Berlin been" is 100% understandable at least to me... it might even be archaic but valid English grammar.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > I think german grammar is really diferent from english. For example they make a sandwich with verbs. For example: > I have been in Berlin. vs I have in Berlin been. Here's another example: "I took out the trash" vs "I took the trash out".
  - jamesknelson 11y ago
    Compared to Japanese, "I have in Berlin been" almost sounds natural. In Japanese, you'd say "Berlin ni ita", or translating rather literally, "Berlin in was". You'd omit the "I", which can lead to some interesting misunderstandings. Needless to say, Google translate borders on useless here.
  - eru 11y ago
    Humans should be able to mostly understand word-for-word literal translations between English and German (in both directions).

sliverstorm 11y ago

I find how well that works is directly related to how closely related English is to the language in question. The further you get from its Germanic and Latin roots, the proportionally less sense a rough translation makes. Some of that is figures of speech, some of it is colloquialisms, some of it is just weird grammar. For example, Japanese tends to omit the subject, which is incredibly confusing when directly translated if you aren't expecting it.

gerbal 11y ago
Germany newspapers apparently use weird grammar conventions that makes translation engines have fits. Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. The translation of the above article is pretty good because a number of people have looked at it and made corrections, but the average German Newspaper article translation is nearly incomprehensible.
- dvdkhlng 11y ago
  > Google Translate is pretty good on german conversations, anything the EU publishes, and literature, but is really terrible at newspapers. AFAIK Google translate is trained by using corpora of documents that have known-good translations. I could imagine that they are trained using EU documents, as these would usually be available in multiple languages. That would explain why performance on stuff published by the EU is so good...
- eru 11y ago
  > anything the EU publishes, [...] Google Translate grew up on EU parliamentary publications.
uqbartlon 11y ago
I think german grammar is really diferent from english. For example they make a sandwich with verbs. For example: I have been in Berlin. vs I have in Berlin been. Its not the exact translation and maybe theres a beter example but its the idea. Ich bin in berlin gewessen. There is also all the declinations. But yeah its noy japanese.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  See, "I have in Berlin been" is 100% understandable at least to me... it might even be archaic but valid English grammar.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > I think german grammar is really diferent from english. For example they make a sandwich with verbs. For example: > I have been in Berlin. vs I have in Berlin been. Here's another example: "I took out the trash" vs "I took the trash out".
- jamesknelson 11y ago
  Compared to Japanese, "I have in Berlin been" almost sounds natural. In Japanese, you'd say "Berlin ni ita", or translating rather literally, "Berlin in was". You'd omit the "I", which can lead to some interesting misunderstandings. Needless to say, Google translate borders on useless here.
- eru 11y ago
  Humans should be able to mostly understand word-for-word literal translations between English and German (in both directions).