Google Translate’s Strange Results

by Joey deVilla on October 23, 2007

Here’s something pointed out by a guy on Reddit, who took his cue from an entry in the French blog Zorgloob: take a look what happens when you enter sarkozy sarkozy sarkozy (as in French president Nicolas Sarkozy) into Google Translate and select a French-to-English translation:

Screen capture of Google Translate’s French-to-English translation of “Sarkozy Sarkozy Sarkozy”: "Blair defends Bush"

Here’s some other input that yields interesting output:

Is it an Easter Egg by some politically-minded pranksters at Google? Or users abusing the “suggest a better translation” feature? Or a quirk of the way it translates, which one Reddit reader says is based on training by “feeding it documents which have been translated into many languages by the likes of the UN”?

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Barbara Loeb May 28, 2008 at 2:29 pm

Thank you so much for your web site. The fact that this is free is a double bonus and one that is enormously appreciated.
That’s why I keep ooming back to Google.

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