Can we talk about how AI translation still messes up basic stuff

I was on a German trucking forum last week and Google Translate turned "LKW fährt langsam" into "truck drives slowly and steadily" - way too polite. Five years ago it would have just said "truck drives slow" and been fine. Why do these tools keep adding extra words instead of sticking to the simple version?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_hugo21d ago

Hate when translations add fluff that nobody asked for.

patb1221d ago

Right? And it's like the extra words just make it harder to catch what you actually need to know.

nancy52421d ago

Crack a joke at Google Translate's expense - I swear it thinks it's a poet sometimes instead of a translator. My Spanish is pretty basic so I tried to tell my abuela "I'm bringing the cake" and it spat out "I am carrying the pastry with dignity" and she still laughs about it at family dinners. It turned a simple sentence into a whole performance, like calm down buddy nobody asked for the dramatic version. Honestly I'd rather have the clunky word for word translation than these extra fancy lies, at least then I know what's being said.

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