Google Translate had to fix a “minor bug” that was causing the tool to translate “Russian Federation” into “Mordor” a fictional name of a place called “Land of Shadow” in J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Some people go into the tool and update certain terms by translating them into more vulgar and derogatory terms just for fun.Īn article from the BBC in 2016 proves just how bad Google Translate can be at doing its job.

It’s the virtual equivalent of letting an inexperienced relative or friend handle your legal documents in a foreign language-and maybe even worse, because at least a relative or friend wouldn’t intentionally mess around with an important document like that. This goes to show how risky it is to run important documents through the online, free translation tool.

Anyone, from medical experts to your average Native Speaker, can suggest a translation for a certain term, phrase, or idiom. If you find yourself late to a meeting and you just want to convey to your foreign business partner that you’re on your way and just need a few more minutes to get there, go ahead and use Google Translate.īut from a more professional standpoint, it’s best if you steer clear from this free, online tool, and here are six reasons why! 1: Google Translate is crowdsourcedįor starters, Google Translate isn’t operated or updated by professional translators or linguists. So, if you’re in a mall in a foreign country and can’t read the signs, Google Translate gives you a clue as to what it means in your tongue. However, despite many updates, it’s still not able to translate considering the intent behind messages – so it can only work as a standard solution that’s accurate for day-to-day personal use. First introduced in 2006, Google Translate initially used documents from the United Nations and the European Parliament to get the linguistic data needed to create its huge database. Google Translate is a free machine translation service provided by Google that translates texts in over 100 languages.

French to google translate