Gulshan-é-Zabān

Google Translate is created by God himself

Well, approximately.

Here's what Google gives for the first paragraph of Běifāng de Hé (北方的河, the Northern rivers).

I believe that there will be a fair and deep understanding to serve our conclusion: the time, our generation's unique struggle, thinking, branding and choice will reveal its meaning. But by that time we have had for myself naive, errors and limitations of regret], but will not be re-living their own feelings. This is the basis for a profound pessimism. However, for a vast country has a long history, the future finally bright. Because the mother's body where there will be a descent, a soil and water, a lively and robust creative power to make known to the world the birth of newborn babies, sick weak groans will cry in their cheers were drowned. From this point of view, everything should be optimistic.

A few errors detrimental to comprehensibility:

• serve our conclusion: better "serve as our conclusion", but literally it's "make the conclusion for us". The "为", a coverb here meaning "for", is wrongly (but correctly in meaning) interpreted as "serve".
• branding: I would say "trauma", but it isn't the exact word either. It's like ... the traces of the past that still exists on us.
• have had ... regret: "为...而后悔" means "regret for ...", so it's in fact "we will regret for ourselves' naïveté ...".
• but .. feelings: plain wrong. I would say (in a particularly machine-translation way) "and, moreover, sigh for (the fact that) we cannot live again".
• to make known ... babies: again, wrong translations but passable meaning. "于世" (LOC.world), here means simply "(born) into the world", not as baroque as "to make known to the world the birth".
• will ... drowned: "will be drowned in their cheering cries"

These corrections being made, it's still not good English. But who plainly cares? We want to read things in non-English languages, blogs and news, novels and social commentaries. That's all.

Particularly impressive to me is the Russian-English one. The next two paragraphs are from "Golden Rose", by Konstantin Paustovsky.

I can not recall how I learned the story of Paris scavenger Janet Shamete. Shamet earned the existence of the fact that cleaning up the craft shops in the neighborhood. Shamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city, of course, could be thoroughly describe the suburbs, and thus distract the reader from the main thread of the story but, perhaps, is only mentioned that so far in the suburbs of Paris remained the old ramparts. At a time when going action of this story, the shafts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn and bird nests in them.

It's actually readable! What a feat for us things-written-in-an-unknown-language lovers!

The current update to Google Translate included an instant translation feature: for every word (or sometimes letter) you type in, it gives the best translation in English. It's good to see how the possible interpretation changes when every new word is thrown in. Appropriately packaged and debugged, it could be a good package to learn foreign languages...

Not to say that it works for every language. For Chinese, It doesn't understand a lot of idioms current in the not necessarily flowery written language. And it understands Japanese grammar badly:
これはある精神病院の患者、——第二十三号がだれにでもしゃべる話である。

This is a patient in a mental hospital, - the stories speak to anyone of the No. 32.

And if we remove the "、——" part, thinking that it confuses the translator:

This is the story speak to anyone of No. 32 in a mental hospital patients.

*cringe*

• minus27322, Nov, 2009
• 6 comments