Why is Google Translate Unreliable? +More!

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Why I Made This Blog

The other day I was using Google Translate to make some flags for my blog series. I input the saying: For glory and takes! In Latin, it claimed it was "gloriae ceperit." To test a theory I had heard, I switched the translation, and input the Latin, to see what it translated to as English. It came out with: "of the glory? of nothing at all?" I'm sorry but WHAT!? I was extremely confused.

What happened here? I made it my mission to find out...

Punctuation

One HUGE thing I found, was that punctuation actually changed the translation.

With Punctuation
WITHOUT Punctuation

Ok, what on Earth is going on? After some more tests, I found it not only happened with Latin, but with many other languages. According to Quora.com, Google Translate is not based on grammar, and uses probability of a word sequence instead. It is also not meant to be a professional level translator, much like many other translation websites. Does this explain why it can't detect punctuation? Not really. But it does show us that Google Translate isn't exactly supposed to be correct every single time, as it is a free browser tool.

Capitalization

My next test has to do with capitalized letters. Again, do they affect the sentence, or will it stay the same? First, I put "hi" in English, NOT CAPITALIZED. The Latin result was "salve." This time, Google was on spot, and the word wasn't changed at all. But what about another language? Nothing changed, Google Translate does seem to realize that capitalization does not change the sentence.

More Tests

While we may have found the answer (sort of), I still have more to cover.

Google Translate "Rap Song"

Ok, this is nothing educational, just something I find funny. Turn the "Enter Text" section on English. Then turn the "Translation" section to Bosnian. In the English box, spam k, p, s, and t. Then hit the speaker button in Bosnian. Am I the only one who thinks it sounds like a rapper?

Is there a better alternative?

The best translator I could find comes at a price. iTranslate Voice 3 is stated to be the best translator out there (in terms of accuracy), but has way less languages than Google Translate. I myself would just stick with translate, as sometimes the mistakes can be funny. There are plenty of other translating sites out there though, and who knows which is the best, since it could be a matter of opinion.

More Google Translate Facts Found on...GOOGLE!

More than 500 million people use Google Translate. -Less than I expected seeing as it's frickin Google, but whatever.

Google Translate translates more than 100 billion words per day. -THAT'S A LOT!Google Translate now supports 103 languages. -Which may seem like a lot, until you look at how many languages actually exist.92% of Google Translate users are outside of the US. -That's cause we Americans want nothing to do with the outside world...jkjk. (Though it could be true for some)

Bye!

Well, I have nothing left to say! So peace out!1

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Level 33
May 13, 2021
Hope u enjoy!
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Level 55
May 13, 2021
Google Translate isn't 100% unreliable if you use it correctly, at least for Spanish (not sure about other languages). Depending on the language, Translate also provides you with alternate words, etc., and you need to know enough of the language to identify which translation is correct. But I don't recommend using it for blogs or quizzes
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Level 33
May 13, 2021
That is true, same goes for French. I think the more obscure languages have more trouble getting through on it.
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Level 62
May 13, 2021
I used to find Google Translator pretty reliable when I was learning German. However the English - Hindi translator is absolute clownery.
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Level 59
May 13, 2021
What would you say is a reliable translator then? Preferably a free one...
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Level 55
May 13, 2021
None. There's no way to have a translator which produces 100% reliable translations, since many, if not, most, languages have many ways to say a certain word and the verb/noun system is different. If you know the language well enough that you can identify what translation is correct (there are many alternate translations at the bottom of the page when you input word(s)), it should be mostly accurate, though not 100%.
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Level 33
May 13, 2021
I agree with Pandora, and I didn't mean to stop people from using GT, I just tried to point out that it's not as accurate as actually knowing the language. GT actually has a very large variety of languages, which is helpful as your not going to learn all of them.
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Level 55
May 13, 2021
Yes, this is also the reason why you shouldn't directly translate quizzes using Google Translate
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Level 66
May 13, 2021
Hoomans
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Level 75
May 14, 2021
From what I know DeepL is more reliable than Google Translate. Just note that no translate software would be 100% accurate and you shouldn't use them to translate entire quizzes
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Level 68
May 13, 2021
I liked this! The Bosnian translation thingy is funny.
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Level 33
May 14, 2021
Glad u enjoyed!
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Level 65
May 13, 2021
Good, but I found this funny considering that you have never tried to translate a quiz.
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Level 33
May 14, 2021
I don't use google translate to translate quizzes. But that doesn't mean I don't use google translate.
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Level 55
May 14, 2021
When you translate a word, GT doesn't sense the context in which it is being used, so it will give you a wrong meaning in that case.
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Level 48
May 14, 2021
Google Translate can be good if you know the basic grammar of a language and are only using it to translate single nouns or verbs you don't know
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Level 33
May 14, 2021
Yea, Its not terrible. Just not entirely accurate.
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Level 55
May 14, 2021
Correct
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Level 40
May 30, 2021
I notticed one weird glitch

I put in the box ''It's me'' translated in portuguese, and, it said, ''Wsou eu''. It added an W to the word. Correct way would be ''sou eu''. Crazy

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Level 64
Oct 6, 2023
It's very useful, but can be lacking at times, I agree.