The Rack

Borat-style Translation Now in Google Documents

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Last Tuesday, Google introduced a translation service to its cloud-based word processing software, Documents. I abandoned the Microsoft Word ship a long time ago—I think my last release was Word 2002 — and use Documents for all my text entry.  So this additional feature is a neat novelty that just makes my move from MS even sweeter.

Google has been offering the ability to translate Web pages into 53 different languages for some time. So I’m assuming some Google engineer finally got around to adding the right Web service hook into their office software.

Language translation has been  a long standing problem for computer science,  and Google has not solved this by any means.  There are still complexities with idiomatic expressions, verb moods ( subjunctive),  modal verbs, etc. that won’t be untangled with a series of rules coded in software.

So for kicks, I cut and pasted a small section of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables into my Document and then let Google have at it.  Conclusion: Star Trek’s Universal Translator has not yet been reached,  but Google Translate does a good job of making everything sound like Borat.

Results after the jump.

From Le Miserables, Chapter 1:

Il n’est peut-etre pas  inutile, ne fut-ce que pour etre exact en toute, d’indiquer ici le bruites et les propos qui aviaent couro sur son compte au moment ou il etait arrive dans le diocese.   Vrai ou faux, ce qu’on dit des hommes tient souvent autant de place dans leur vie et surtout dans leur desintinee que ce qu’ils font.

Here is a translation of this section that I found on the Web:

It will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do

I recall enough high school-level French to know that peut-etre is roughly translated as “could be” and ne fut-ce que is a conditional construct, “if …”    I just barely got the sense of this passage on my own steam.

And Google had its own unique problems with this passage and gave up on couro, which I’m guessing is some form of the verb “to circulate” and couldn’t figure out that desintinee means destiny :

It may be worth, were it to be as accurate as any, indicated by the noisy and remarks which had couro about him when he had arrived in the diocese. True or false, what is said of men often occupies as important in their lives and especially in their desintinee what they do..
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