# Is Google Translate reliable? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 26, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059 "2012-04-26T20:41:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SDMBKL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sdmbkl/32/7297_2.png) [@SDMBKL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SDMBKL)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/1 "2012-04-26T20:41:23Z")
I was playing with Google Translate, and for no apparent reason, I translated text to Latin. I studied Spanish as a foreign language in grade school, so I knew how Romance languages work. They work VERY similar to English. I typed this into Google Translate: To think I think You think He thinks She thinks It thinks We think You all think They think And I got this as an output: cogitare puto putas cogitat putat putat nos cogitare Vos omnes putant putant Based on my knowledge of Spanish, _to think_ would be _pensar_, the conjugation would be _pienso, piensas, piensa, pensamos, piensais (accent on the a), piensan_. So, why is Google Translator giving me this seemingly incoherent jumble of conjugations? Is the Latin conjugation correct? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/2 "2012-04-26T20:48:49Z")
The Latin verb would be _cogitare_; the present simple indicative is _cogito, cogitas, cogitat, cogitamus, cogitatis, cogitant_. _Pensare_ exists in Latin as well (same as _cogitar_ exists in Spanish), but frequency rules say that _pensar_ gets translated to _cogitare_. Note that assuming that the root of a Spanish word will be Latin is a very risky proposition: in this case, _sonó la flauta por casualidad_ (you got lucky), but we have as many words with Germanic, Arabic, Basque or Greek roots as Latin ones. Also, Latin does not use tildes. Ancient Greek does; they eventually passed to southern Italian languages/dialects and from there to Spanish. The reason translate is giving you that mess is because it’s not recognizing the input’s nature. It’s trying to translate each line separatedly, and the records it has in its memory happen to be that jumble, a mixture of _cogitare_ and _putare_. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/3 "2012-04-26T21:05:38Z")
> [@SDMBKL](#): > > Based on my knowledge of Spanish, _to think_ would be _pensar_ . . . Not necessarily. We use _think_ in English to say a lot of things that don’t translate as _pensar_. Not only that, but _think_ can be stative or aspectual depending on which idea you want it to mean. It’s impossible to translate a list of decontextualized, isoluated verb forms like yours in any meaningful way, even for a human–so why do you expect Google to be able to? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/4 "2012-04-26T21:19:47Z")
**guizot** , while I agree that there are rarely words with a single possible translation, that list wasn’t “decontextualized, isolated”, it was a conjugation. If google had been able to recognize it as one, its choice of which “to think” verb to conjugate could have been one of several, but the translation wouldn’t have been “a jumble”: it would have been a conjugated verb in Latin. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/5 "2012-04-26T22:27:26Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > that list wasn’t “decontextualized, isolated”, it was a conjugation. What else is a conjugation if not decontextualized? Like you said, there’s no reason to translate a conjugation in the first place, especially not one in English, which has only one conjugation, anyway. I agree completely that if it had recognized the input as a conjugation, it should have produced something different. But the Google translator (from what I can tell) uses (as you point out) a kind of very crude corpus to base it’s meanings. And so of course something like _I think_–which in English most often occurs as a discourse marker without any propositional weight–leaves Google without much to go on. ---
**Author:** ![kmshrader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b782af/32.png) [@kmshrader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kmshrader)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/6 "2012-04-27T06:09:44Z")
My experience with Latin is very very minimal, but my experience with Google Translate is pretty significant; I teach German to high school students. IMHO, GT should only ever be used to get the gist of something translated from a foreign language to your mother tongue. It should NEVER be used to translate text into a language you aren’t well-versed in. There’s just too much room for error, and an imaginative brain is necessary for that sort of work. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/7 "2012-04-27T09:23:14Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > What else is a conjugation if not decontextualized? Like you said, there’s no reason to translate a conjugation in the first place, especially not one in English, which has only one conjugation, anyway. A conjugation is the whole text, it’s not each line. It has a context of “practicing grammar”. And I never said that there is no reason to translate them. I’ve translated both complete and partial conjugations in language classes many times. Please don’t put words in my mouth (or my fingers, as the case would be). ---
**Author:** ![living\_in\_hell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@living\_in\_hell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/living_in_hell)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/8 "2012-04-27T11:09:19Z")
I’m just so surprised to see a non-survey from you that I can’t even create a reply. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/9 "2012-04-27T11:38:58Z")
> [@SDMBKL](#): > > So, why is Google Translator giving me this seemingly incoherent jumble of conjugations? Because it’s a machine translator, and machines make terrible translators. Really, the state of the art isn’t anywhere close to what a human translator can do. Besides which, you picked about the worst possible example to expect a machine to translate; most algorithms (including Google Translate) assumes the input is going to be coherent, running text. A list of verb conjugations is not such an input. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/10 "2012-04-27T16:31:23Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > A conjugation is the whole text, it’s not each line. It has a context of “practicing grammar”. And I never said that there is no reason to translate them. I’ve translated both complete and partial conjugations in language classes many times. Please don’t put words in my mouth (or my fingers, as the case would be). I apologize–I see that you did not say. Nevertheless, I think a conjugation is indeed decontextualized _ **for precisely that reason** _. It is done _only_ to display language, not to communicate with it–it is not a natural use of language, _ **which is probably how Google derives meaning for translation** _. (Moreover, except as a brief point of demonstration, there is hardly any reason to conjugate English in the first place–as only one person assumes morphological change, and only three verbs are irregular in that regard.) A conjugation is just an inappropriate way to judge Google’s reliability for translation. People can conjugate verbs over and over again without having the slightest idea what they’re saying, let alone how to really use the verb forms correctly in natural discourse. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/11 "2012-04-27T16:45:01Z")
Google translate isn’t so bad **as long as you’re good enough to double-check it**. That is, it’s good to double-check sentences you’re not sure of in languages you’re proficient but not excellent in. It’s a terrible tool for just figuring out what some language you’ve never heard of is saying. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/12 "2012-04-27T17:56:22Z")
> [@](#): > > Taking time for yourself, make sure you get at least 150 minutes of exercise a week, get plenty of sleep, eat healthy snacks, don’t skip meals. Keep a stress chart or journal to find you high stress points. And of course they gave us the website for our health insurance provider for more information. Translated to Croation, then to Russian, then to Vietnamese, then back to: > [@](#): > > Take time for yourself, make sure you have at least 150 minutes of exercise a week, get lots of sleep, eat healthy, do not skip meals. Keep a log or chart the tension to find the brightest moments of tension. And, of course, for our home page provided our health insurance for more information. That’s actually pretty good! ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2012, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-google-translate-reliable/620059/13 "2012-04-27T19:09:30Z")
My wife sometimes does professional translation and has used Google translate as a starting point. She runs the passage and then goes through and cleans it up so it’s grammatically correct and anything silly is fixed. It must be reliable “enough” to make the practice worthwhile or else she’d just do it all by hand.