deutschGoogle translator
I was talking with a friend and at some time he told me a German sentence – I was impressed, because it was grammatically correct and also the pronunciation was good. Later he told a 2nd sentence – and again I was impressed (but this time the pronunciation was not so good 
). When I asked about the German sentences, he told he used Google translator. I told that Google translator must be good.
But the next 3 translated sentences proved me wrong – I could not get the meaning at all. Also not, when I translated the sentence word for word back to English (reason: I assumed Google would translate it like this). So I had to take back my initial assumption.
But did I have enough data to say something at all on the quality?
So, we agreed, that I do some further testing on this.
How did I proceed?
1. Search some background info on Google translator (e.g. it was fed with 200 billion words).
2. But well, I did not want to read at that time too much and also maintain my curiosity, so I continued like this:
get me some random sentences.
I went to yahoo and searched for “english site” and took this website for getting me some random English text. Reason: this is a site especially for learning and teaching English – as it tells: “A web-site for teachers and learners of English as a secondary language from a German point of view”.
So, my intention here was: to get something for the benefit for Google, as I assume this kind of text would be better translated (do not get me wrong: for testing I would take later some text which is e.g. more technical, nested, … to challenge the application more )
3. Then I decided to take about every 5th sentence from there (why every 5th? well, which would you have used?) - here are the 16 sentences.
4. So, I started to translate these sentences with Google translator to German (since I have no version info on Google Translator for rechecking later: at 20.3.2007, 21:38 German time (GMT+1)). The sentences which (from my point of view) were translated perfect, I marked with OK - see here the results.
So this makes until now a ratio of about 48% (2 out of the 5 sentences from the conversation and 8 from the above 16 sentences).
Then I translated the remaining 8 not-OK sentences how I would like them myself (using one time LEO) - see here.
Actually the tests are not yet finished, I just gave some random input (16 sentences only - from my point of view easy sentences) to get me an impression on the quality. So, we have now a number - 48% - whatever this might tell. I wonder how much other online translators (Babelfish uses Systran, PROMT, … ) would achieve? But does this prove anything so far? It just tells: for these sentences it had this result - how good this works for each one of us is another case.
But well, it is late and perhaps you can help me testing? Otherwise I will continue soon.
I searched (of course in Google ) for other old bugs from Google translator. Found e.g. these: hit, hit, hit
Erkan YILMAZ
BTW:
Michael has listed here web services for English/German + vice versa translations. My all time favorite is LEO.
Michael plans to write a series on translation tools - so drop by his blog.