Precious Bodily FluidsMay 16, 2024
Baldur Bjarnason

Google translate between Icelandic and English has gone from 75% useful, 25% laughable nonsense to mostly unusable in the space of a year. You used to be able to use it effectively as a dictionary. Enter a single word and you'd get the most common dictionary translation

Now, half the time you'll just get nonsense.

May 16, 2024 at 10:47amWeb
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024
It "helpfully" autocorrects Icelandic words it doesn't recognise before translation, which would be sort of okay if it worked. But it seems to recognise a fraction of the Icelandic words it used to and its autocorrections are utter garbage.
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024
And the gaps are utterly weird. It'll handle "moltugerð" just fine, but not "sjónskekkja" or "loðna", both words that are arguably much more commonly used.
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024

Let's just say that if it weren't for the photo, you'd have no idea what animal this news story was about

Funnily, it gets it right in the tags, but never in the body of the story, where "bifur" is variously translated as car, bier, wild bison, and bivalbe

https://www-ruv-is.translate.goog/frettir/erlent/2024-05-16-villtur-bifur-a-ferd-fyrsta-sinni-i-2500-ar-412820?_x_tr_sl=is&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true

Villtur bifur á ferð fyrsta sinni í 2.500 ár - RÚV.is

Villtur bifur fannst nýverið í Danmörku. Sérfræðingur hjá Umhverfisverndarstofnun Danmerkur telur slíkt dýr ekki hafa komið þangað um 2.500 ára skeið. Hann segir dýrið hafa lagt í býsna langt ferðalag yfir haf og land.

RÚV
Show threadJohn Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧡✊🏻✊🏿May 16, 2024
@baldur 🤣
Show threadJakub Iwanowski May 16, 2024
@baldur "He says that it is quite likely that the car that hissed at the kindergarten children is the same one that was spotted at Gedser Odde six months ago" - that's a one impolite car
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024
@dzajew Not a chill car at all 😁
Show threadMarcus Marcius MarcellusMay 16, 2024
@dzajew @baldur Must be from Tesla.
Show threadwarning low flying owlsMay 16, 2024

@baldur Is it a beaver?

I may not know much about biology, but I can tell it's not a mollusc!

Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024
@Pyrogenesis Yup!
Show threadCharlotte /Cinny     May 17, 2024
@baldur
in general it seems that google's knowledge about what words are real mostly only works in languages where words can't be concatenated

google docs keeps underlining german compound words and recommends splitting them apart like in english, no matter how often i tell it that that suggestion is wrong
Show threadSteve WilliamsMay 16, 2024
@baldur
There’s plenty of garbage language being generated with (and about) AI. Perhaps #Google are doing a Thames Water, and dumping the overflow into translation results to hide it?
💩
Show threadCraig GrannellMay 16, 2024

@baldur Icelandic appears to be a forgotten language. It’s notable that Duolingo still doesn’t cover it – although that’s perhaps for the best, given its shift towards AI and automation.

It’s a bit sad that mini-G is learning Spanish and now German in Duolingo, and French at school, but we haven’t yet found a suitable means of getting Icelandic into her head, in self-learning times. (Drops was OK for vocab, but that’s all it does – nothing more.)

Show threadCraig GrannellMay 16, 2024
@baldur Might be good if she knows at least some passable Icelandic by the time we have to reapply for her Icelandic citizenship. (Which I will never stop being dumfounded that this is something we will have to do.)
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024
@craiggrannell Yeah, the system here is absolutely horrible in that regard 😐
Show threadBashStKidMay 16, 2024
@baldur Which must be a deliberate choice - it’s not like they threw the old database away. Presumably it’s had the AI-is-all-you-need script kiddies ‘upgrading’ it.
Show threadDave McMay 16, 2024
@baldur I'm noticing a huge decrease in the quality of Google Maps. Lots of incorrect directions and incorrect rights of way.
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 16, 2024
@guigsy Ouch!
Show threadPaul H 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺May 16, 2024

@baldur @guigsy

That could literally be true...

Show threadAlastair TempleMay 16, 2024
@baldur I have been noticing something similar with Swedish. It is possible that it is just my improving Swedish that is making me notice things and it is still good enough for my purposes, but I'm finding it doing increasingly strange things, and being far more inconsistent when it comes to larger bodies of text than I remember it being in the past.
Show threadMike ElganMay 16, 2024
@baldur Nobody does enshittification like Google.
Show threadVoronMay 16, 2024
@baldur @MikeElgan #fgoogle when the history of the internet is written, #google will be a villain not a hero
Show threadabadideaMay 16, 2024
@baldur @at this is apple translate but it’s the same underlying LLM issue: can’t decide between peeping and squeaking? squeaping. can’t decide between goatee and mustache? goateache https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/112370986201769045
abadidea (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image not only have I discovered another new species of crift (Apple Translate absolutely cannot render 蛐蛐儿 as cricket and comes up with a new spelling every time), it has decided that goatees are out, goateaches are in (Little Pudding is the girl’s name and there’s nothing here grammatically to distinguish her from a literal cup of pudding, so I’ll give the translator a pass on that one)

Infosec Exchange
Show threadMormegilMay 19, 2024
@baldur I never noticed this (even though I don't use Google Translate much) but today, kids used it to translate "kámen" from Czech to English. It's just a common word, trivially "stone", nothing complicated. But GT replied "calculus". I was quite shocked and immediately recalled your toot.