The chat around AI has gathered momentum over the last few weeks, with ChatGPT grabbing many headlines for its incredible ability to write reams of content in seconds. And we’ve written many a blog on why the current capabilities of AI just don’t cut the mustard when it comes to providing quality transcription. But here’s a different one for you… Google Translate!
It just sometimes doesn’t quite get there in terms of offering up an exact match to a phrase when you ask it to translate to another language.
We’ve come across some amusing stories in our time, including when phrases don’t translate with quite the same meaning from one language to another even when you don’t use Google Translate. So grab a coffee, get yourself comfortable and read on to see our favourites!
Google Translate delivers the opposite message
We all know how crucial it was to get the right message out to the public when the pandemic struck, especially around the importance of vaccination. And each message also needed to be translated into various languages to be able to reach people for whom English wasn’t their first language – or indeed wasn’t spoken at all. This is where the Virginia Department of Health in the US made an error by turning to Google Translate to translate its vaccine info into Spanish. The phrase “the vaccine is not required”, was mistranslated to “the vaccine is not necessary”. Oops!
Missing the mark
Sometimes phrases just don’t translate well when you plug them into Google Translate. The English-language phrase “in the black” is a good thing – it’s the phrase used to indicate that a business has positive growth on its balance sheets – it’s doing well and making a profit. But when you put that phrase into Google Translate to be translated into German, it really doesn’t bring up the same result… English “in the black” -> German “im dunkeln”. Put that back and it then becomes German “im dunkeln” -> English “in the dark”… I’m not sure any business owner would want to be “in the dark” about what’s going on with their business?!
Quality not translated
Taco Bell came a cropper when their menu was translated into Japanese.
‘Cheesy chips’ became ‘low quality chips’, and ‘crunchwrap supreme-beef’ was translated to ‘supreme court beef’. ‘We’ve got nothing to hide’ even became ‘What did we bring here to hide it’. We’re not sure any of those translations have the right ring to them!
Banking campaign binned
High street bank HSBC launched a campaign back in 2008 that cost them millions, which after becoming lost in translation had to be abandoned. The theme was ‘Assume Nothing’ – the message being that the bank doesn’t make any assumptions about their customers. But when the campaign was extended beyond English-speaking countries and translated into other languages, it translated into ‘Do Nothing’…
And if you can’t change it… front it out!
This is what website builder Wix found themselves having to do. The name works well in a number of languages… just not in German where the direct translation is ‘masturbation’. Once the error was spotted they tackled it head on, producing a tongue-in-cheek video that celebrated customers who ‘did it themselves’, and other amusing PR messages including ‘the number of Wixers in Berlin has grown by 32%’.
Transcription needs careful attention too
There’s a real similarity in the need for human cognition when it comes to transcription. Just as with nuances within a language, having the human touch when transcribing the spoken word into the written word is the best way to ensure that accurate meaning and content is conveyed, as well as mitigating the risk of any mishears.
When you choose a transcription service like ours, you get a service that can save you time in “sense checking” work produced using AI. Whether that’s correcting reams of content produced without using paragraphs or correct grammar, or checking it for accuracy including references and names, FSTL can take care of it all for you.
Contact alex@fionashipley.com if you’d like to know more.