Odd results with Google Translate

[Perry Mowbray]

Whilst sorting out an issue with the Norwegian translation of weekdays for TucknDar (see TimeZone post), I discovered that Google Translate was dropping the first day in the list of days in a week when translating to Norwegian (and only Norwegian).

This is the Norwegian Translation: http://tinyurl.com/d3jtqw

This is a German Translation: http://tinyurl.com/dmyxvn

It seems that when you translate a list, Google can make some unwelcome grammatical adjustments when commas are used. The problem is fixed by using periods: http://tinyurl.com/df52cb

[Shades]

Was that not the point of computer translations?...to have odd, off the bat translations that become amusing/funny/hilarious?

Although Google is better at it than Babelfish, translations made by the latter were (more) fun to use in some of the conversations I had over here. 

[Perry Mowbray]

Yes, good point

I guess I was thinking that a simple word list would have got a one-to-one translation: but the comma separated list was interpreted as punctuation.  clear now, but it was late when the it was happening.

[TucknDar]

See what happens when you move Sunday to some other place in the list:
'Thursday, Sunday' -> 'torsdag og søndag'

'og' = 'and'

 

[Perry Mowbray]

See what happens when you move Sunday to some other place in the list:
'Thursday, Sunday' -> 'torsdag og søndag'

'og' = 'and'

 

-TucknDar (March 20, 2009, 12:49 AM)

Yes: it's trying to make a sentance. What's odd is that I couldn't find another language where that happened in a comma list -- which makes it quite odd