Thursday, December 20, 2007

Surely You Are Joking, Google Translation

Google launched a translation bot for the Google Talk service. Basically you can just add a translation bot to your chat contact (e.g. en2fr@bot.talk.google.com would provide English -> French translation), and talk to him as with any other friend, and it will provide an instantaneous translation! Read more about this new feature here.

So Eric and I were trying out the English-Chinese translator, and here is the transcript:

me: We can talk in Chinese language
en2zh: 我们可以谈中国语文
me: It's funny
en2zh: 它的搞笑
me: Hahaha
me: Haha
me: It doesn't understand haha.
en2zh: 它不明白haha 。
me: the chinese translation is not too good
en2zh: 中文译本,是不是不太好
Eric: Sland doesn't work
en2zh: 岛屿行不通
me: for example
en2zh: 例如:
Eric: *Slang
en2zh: *俚语
me: read this
en2zh: 阅读这本
Eric: Hahah
me: Are you free tomorrow?
en2zh: 是你的自由,明天呢?
Eric: Let me try
en2zh: 让我试试
Eric: Holy cow!
en2zh: 圣牛!
Eric: Muahahahhahahaha
me: HAHAHAHAHAHA
me: Okay
en2zh: 还好
me: back to study
en2zh: 回到研究
me: back to studying
en2zh: 回到学习
Eric: Must say "go back to learn"
en2zh: 必须说, "回去了解" 。
en2zh: 嗯,不能
me: go back to learn
en2zh: 回去学习
Eric: Oh
en2zh:
Eric: Go back to revise
me: Good luck for your physics!
en2zh: 回去修改
en2zh: 好运,为你的物理!
Eric: You totally made my day!
en2zh: 你完全说了我的一天!
Eric: I love this!
en2zh: 我爱这个!
me: The bad translation made my day too
en2zh: 坏的翻译了我的天太
me: haha
Eric: Esp Holy cow!
en2zh: 电除尘器圣牛!
me: Okay it's getting worse and worse
en2zh: 还好它的每况愈下
Eric: hold stomach big laugh!
en2zh: 持有胃大笑!
me: hey really gtg
en2zh: 嘿真的gtg
me: see ya!
en2zh: 见雅!
Eric: Bye
en2zh: 再见。
Can somebody tell me how in the world "esp" becomes 电除尘器?! 圣牛!

p/s: Happy 400th post in My Little Moments!

4 comments:

nh said...

This feels to me like chatting to a bot instead of a real human. I tried chatting with a real bot before and the result was totally hilarious too. Hah..

Eehui said...

haha these are good:
me: Are you free tomorrow?
en2zh: 是你的自由,明天呢?
Eric: Holy cow!
en2zh: 圣牛!
looks like we need to wait few more years before they include more intelligence into translation software!

changyang1230 said...

Nooi Hoay: It is indeed a bot.

Lasilasi: Haha they are using more statistical methods than syntactic algorithm in the translations, I read. But then yeah, it's simply horrible to mistranslate "are you free tomorrow". :P

Lee Young, 李阳 said...

rofl... I have a similar experience using google translation to translate a webpage, haha.

http://perspectivevision.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-translate.html