Google Translate used to get the individual words right for Icelandic and everything else wrong. Now it’s much better at syntax and grammar but so so so many of the words themselves are now outright ridiculous
@baldur ISL<>ENG has been a disaster for as long as I’ve been aware of it. Far too few resources for learning ISL (and the uni course I took in Reykjavik was awful and arrogant). Poor >ISL translation has been replaced by terrifyingly bad (and only slightly improving) automation. But also >ENG translation continues to be substandard, presumably due to a combination of costs and everyone in Iceland thinking they have perfect English. (Mrs G almost daily spots some ISL>ENG flub of note.)
@baldur although, to be fair and very frank, one might also argue that the standard of English in England isn’t exactly stellar across the board. (I always find it astonishing in eg shopping centres, when signs designed with permanence in mind have glaring errors. Pay an editor to check things! Gah.)
@baldur My favourite is when "logging" [as in creating a registry of actions in computers] is consistently translated to "skógarhögg" [as in chopping down trees], thinking that since Google being a technically biased entity, it would mostly be the other way around.
Anyway, got a special folder called "Þýðingaslummur"where I collect the worst offending phrases, put some samples below:
@rysiek@baldur This is maybe not as stupid as it seems; originally at Alþingi in Þingvellir, the laws were recited orally in high voice for all during the parliament - even perhaps with intonation like while singing.
But I seriously doubt that GT goes to such depths in its reasoning... :emoji_squint:
@baldur A friend of mine has also complained about it--among other things that they can't anymore suggest improvements/change specific words in the way they used to be able t.
@baldur Aside: I don't speak Icelandic, so I also don't know what a skógarÞröstur is. And now that Google Translate can't translate it, I'd be screwed.
But I do speak Danish and a bit of Swedish. So my guess (without looking it up on Google) is that skógar = forest and Þröstur = thrush.
@datarama Nope, you’re way way more correct. It’s a type of thrush that’s commonly found in forested areas (Icelandic names are quite often on the more literal end of the spectrum) 🙂
@baldur Bing Translate (which Facebook uses) may be slightly better at Icelandic but it's been years since FB disabled the feature that lets you simply post something in multiple languages with your own translation.
Also, last time I went to the cinema in Iceland it was pretty much ruined by the 7th grade English and Icelandic level the subtitle translator had. (For others seeing this post, subtitles are generally mandatory and not an option in cinemas.)
@alda Yeah, subtitle translations here have gone seriously downhill very quickly here. Not just in the cinema.
It’s an issue for certain publishing genres. Young Adult books, for example, are frequently so badly translated that readers (actual teenagers, not adults reading YA) have been complaining about it. I mean, they never did put much work into YA but apparently it’s even worse today.
@baldur@alda Long before LLMs, I saw a Danish subtitle where, I shit you not, "carbon dating" had been translated to "gå på stævnemøde med kulstof" ("going on a date with carbon").
@datarama@baldur There's bad translations and then there's translators having fun.
The one with the Jackass crew appearing on an Icelandic blind date show is legendary for the subtitle translations alone.
I'm not quoting the originals here but „ég myndi súpa ballarhaf“ and „reykja njóla í dimmum húsasundum“ for fellatio and smoking weed within the first 10 minutes got me to remove the painter's tape from the lower 1/3 of my TV screen.
@baldur@alda As a related footnote, one of my old school mates has worked as a translator for a lot of his professional life, and subtitling was the worst. He told me that they often had to translate text transcripts without even seeing the film they were subtitling (due to studio paranoia about pirating), which meant they often screwed things up simply because they had no contextual cues to go on beyond the text.
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