# Wow! Google translates... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 22, 2008, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950 "2008-08-22T18:15:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/1 "2008-08-22T18:15:35Z")
Pretty mundane and pointless I suppose but it intrigued me so I must share it. Friend sent me a link to [this article](http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.milenio.com%2Fmexico%2Fmilenio%2Fnota.asp%3Fid%3D651680&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=es&tl=en). It wasn’t until I had read the whole thing that I noticed the bit at the top about “Google: This page was automatically translated from Spanish.” And I’m like, really? I mean, I knew that Google gave you the option to translate pages in its search results that aren’t in English, but they’ve always resulted in stuttery babelfish era translations that give you the gist of what you are reading but are hardly elegant. But this translation had me fooled, I thought it was originally written in English. And with all the SAT words! No Dick and Jane verse here. Color me impressed, Google! ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/2 "2008-08-22T18:19:46Z")
Translates Russian very well too. Not that I have any evil plans that involve translating Russian. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/3 "2008-08-22T18:25:48Z")
Have you tried to use the non-automatic translation with this page? Does it give the same result? Also, why is Google deciding to translate the page all my itself? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/4 "2008-08-22T18:25:50Z")
:eek: Wow! That’s a LOT better than I would have expected. It’s well within the range of regular English text, though it has a few glitches. Why hadn’t I heard of this before? :: goes off to start reading French newspapers :: :: Heck, might was well try Japanese… :: ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/5 "2008-08-22T18:29:43Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] :eek: :: Heck, might was well try Japanese… :: [/QUOTE] Providing you know how to type Japanese words for your google search… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/6 "2008-08-22T18:41:28Z")
[QUOTE=clairobscur] Providing you know how to type Japanese words for your google search… 😃 [/QUOTE] Nope. “maglev japan”, search only pages in Japanese… it helps that I was searching an imported technical term. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-google-translates/460950/7 "2008-08-22T18:45:10Z")
It’s very good, compared to stuttering Babelfish standards, but all the same, no one should confuse it for a human-quality translation or native English writing; hardly a sentence in the thing isn’t syntactically malformed in some small way or another.