# Translation by Bing **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 17, 2014, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336 "2014-04-17T13:00:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/1 "2014-04-17T13:00:44Z")
This a Facebook posting verbatim, accompanied by a “translation”. Note that one of the grandchildren is named Vi. Mis nietos Giao y Vi hablan en castellano con su nanny Ana. Esos nos alegra muchisimo a Mario y a mi. Este video lo tomo ella y se llama 'Caras de Giao y Vi". My grandchildren Giao and I saw speak Spanish with your nanny Ana. Those we are happy a lot Mario and my. “This video took it her and called ’ faces of Giao and I saw”. (Translated by Bing) ---
**Author:** ![andrewm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c57346/32.png) [@andrewm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andrewm)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/2 "2014-04-17T13:29:53Z")
Google doesn’t do much better: My grandchildren and I saw Giao speak Castilian with his nanny Ana These pleases us a lot to Mario and me. This video I take it and is called 'Faces of Giao and Vi. " ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/3 "2014-04-17T13:46:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Mis nietos Giao y Vi hablan en castellano con su nanny Ana. Esos nos alegra muchisimo a Mario y a mi. Este video lo tomo ella y se llama 'Caras de Giao y Vi". My grandchildren Giao and Vi speak in Castillan\* with their nanny Anna. That is very pleasing to Mario and me. She took this video called Faces of Giao and Vi. - Castillian is a Spanish dialect, often considered " proper" Spanish for those learning the language. ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/4 "2014-04-17T14:16:09Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > My grandchildren Giao and Vi speak in Castillan\* with their nanny Anna. That is very pleasing to Mario and me. She took this video called Faces of Giao and Vi. > > - Castillian is a Spanish dialect, often considered " proper" Spanish for those learning the language. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the OP is requesting a translation. The OP is commenting on what comes out of Bing when you tell it (via Facebook) to translate. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/5 "2014-04-17T22:41:29Z")
Just yesterday, I looked up some information about the Polish singer Sława Przybylska and then ran it through Google to translate it into English. Her fist name, Sława, is the Polish word for “Fame”. So the English translation kept calling her Fame Przybylska, and even worse, kept trying to fit the word fame into the sentences as a grammatical noun. as if the sentence meaning was about her fame… So, I conclude that Google Translate really has no way to discriminate when there is a name that is also a word. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/6 "2014-04-17T23:15:03Z")
Indeed, Mrs Iggy’s home city translates as “pear tree” with interesting attempts to use the word pear as a noun. Google translation of newspaper headline: “Program yourself pear tree at Easter with afternoon” What it is supposed to mean: “Easter programming in Pereira for Holy Week with LaTarde” Pereira being the city. LaTarde being the name of the local newspaper. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/7 "2014-04-17T23:50:39Z")
Yes, I was not asking for a translation. I more or less understood it, or I could have asked my colleague who was the grandmother in question (and Mario her husband). The grandchildren live in Brooklyn, BTW, so they have a nanny who speaks Castillian. My colleague and her husband are Argentinian by birth. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/8 "2014-04-17T23:54:19Z")
People talk about how good modern machine translation is but mostly whenever I use it it comes up with barely intelligible gibberish, as in these examples. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/9 "2014-04-18T03:52:44Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > My grandchildren Giao and Vi speak in Castillan\* with their nanny Anna. That is very pleasing to Mario and me. She took this video called Faces of Giao and Vi. > > - Castillian is a Spanish dialect, often considered " proper" Spanish for those learning the language. - No, there it means Spanish. The word _castellano_ refers both to a dialectal group and to the language itself. > [@Iggy](#): > > Indeed, Mrs Iggy’s home city translates as “pear tree” with interesting attempts to use the word pear as a noun. > > Google translation of newspaper headline: “Program yourself pear tree at Easter with afternoon” > > What it is supposed to mean: “Easter programming in Pereira for Holy Week with LaTarde” > Pereira being the city. LaTarde being the name of the local newspaper. Heh, Pereira isn’t even Spanish - it means field of pear trees, but in Galego (and possibly Portuguese). ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/10 "2014-04-18T14:39:17Z")
My experience with Facebook offering translations by Bing is pretty poor. I sometimes see one word posts that Facebook offers a translation. I click on the link, and it says no translation available. Sometimes it offers to translate things that are already in English. Sometimes it doesn’t offer to translate things that are in Spanish. If the feature worked, I’d enjoy it. But it doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/11 "2014-04-18T17:01:47Z")
> [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](#): > > Sometimes it offers to translate things that are already in English. Sometimes it doesn’t offer to translate things that are in Spanish. > > If the feature worked, I’d enjoy it. But it doesn’t. Pure guess on my part, but it may relate to the language settings of the person posting and the person reading the message. If you have your language set to **English (US)** there is no practical way for Facebook to know in a short piece of text that you are in fact posting in Spanish. Similarly if your language is set to Spanish and you type a message in English, anyone with their language set to English is presumably going to get an offer to translate even though there is no need. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/12 "2014-04-18T17:06:31Z")
Once my friend wrote me the song “Happy Birthday” in solfege syllables (do re mi etc.) on Facebook, and Bing translated them into some odd words. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2014, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/13 "2014-04-18T17:36:27Z")
> [@Canadjun](#): > > Pure guess on my part, but it may relate to the language settings of the person posting and the person reading the message. If you have your language set to **English (US)** there is no practical way for Facebook to know in a short piece of text that you are in fact posting in Spanish. Similarly if your language is set to Spanish and you type a message in English, anyone with their language set to English is presumably going to get an offer to translate even though there is no need. I’d buy that, at least somewhat. But the link to provide a translation isn’t always there. It appears to try to detect when it is needed, and provides it then. And sometimes when it decides to provide the link, it resolves into “No translation available.” So apparently the algorithm that determines if it will provide a translation link isn’t related to the algorithm to actually do a translation. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2014, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/14 "2014-04-24T13:45:02Z")
I once had a translate link for writing in English, that, when clicked, translated one word to text speak. It was weird. And, no, it doesn’t seem to correlate with the language you speak in your profile. My Russian friend only sometimes gets a translate link when she speaks Russian, and a friend who barely speaks French did get a translation. ---
**Author:** ![wellanuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@wellanuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wellanuff)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2014, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/15 "2014-04-25T13:12:08Z")
I was a translator for many years. These machine translations are a perfect example of why I was never really worried about losing my job to a machine. Someday there will be perfectly cromulent machine translation, but it will probably not come until we have artificial intelligence that is nearly on a par to human intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2014, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/translation-by-bing/686336/16 "2014-04-25T15:00:01Z")
The other day I made a joke in a Facebook status about eating cupcakes for supper. A friend commented with the word “Supcakes” and a translation was offered (but ultimately didn’t work out.)