Thursday, November 13, 2014

The worst kind

see textToday we see Google committing the worst kind of error: the one that produces a grammatical English sentence ... or very nearly ... that's wrong.

Things like this "The beauty of censorship in that of Vladimir Putin's wife uhaživaniâh Xi in China, no one will know", or this "To transfer the shooter on an hour ago", or this "In the words of politicians promise more economic cars in Russia, in fact, are traded among themeselves who should first begin to punish: why the EU postpones sanctions against Russia" are obvious errors. You can't be sure where the mistakes lie, but you know they can't be right.

Here, though, we have
Автор "ЭП" описал доступным для всех языком, без эмоционального подтекста или моральных дилемм, для чего Россия вторглась в Украину.

Bing: The author of the "EP" described the language accessible to all, without emotional overtones or moral dilemmas, which Russia invaded Ukraine.

Google: Author of "VC" describes the available for all languages, without the emotional subtext or moral dilemmas, for which Russia invaded Ukraine.
Bing's almost looks right. Most people I showed it to think the mistake is that it should be "with which".

And Google's is worse (because it looks better). For one thing, there is no immediately apparent error at all, barring the superfluous articles, just a triflingly misplaced "available for all". And then VC? VC? What the heck? How did ЭП (EhP) - Economic Pravda - become VC?  And then somehow "language" became plural, and is the goal of Russia's invasion! They invaded for a language!

Both of them completely miss the point of the instrumental case here. It should be:
The author of "EP" described in language accessible to all, without emotional overtones or moral dilemmas, why Russia invaded Ukraine.
Yep, that pesky grammar. Those pesky case endings. He's not describing language at all. He's describing something in language.

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1 Comments:

At 10:22 PM, November 13, 2014 Anonymous Kathie had this to say...

I've had Google Translate omit the "not" when translating "não" in a Portuguese sentence, thus totally reversing its meaning :-(

 

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