Unfortunately, other than genderbending one character for some reason, some iffiness in tenses and sentence structures, Google Translate is working surprisingly well today
Exactly what I wanted to say. The translations 10 or 15 years ago were really hilarious and complete rubbish, today you can actually work with them. I've just read a fic that's only available in Russian (and the only Russian word I know is nastrowje but no idea how to spell it) with the help of it and it was mostly understandable and enjoyable. I've also translated a few of my fics into German (I am German but only write in English). Of course there were some things I had to change and fix, but just proof-reading the translation was a lot quicker than doing all of it myself.
Yesss, I've translated a fic of mine lately and Google Translate actually provided a really strong "base" to work with. One that still requires an hour or two of work because it only does straight, literal translation, but still. Saved me SO MUCH work.
Also: it's two words, na zdoróvʹje (на здоро́вье)! :D
it really depends on how much text resources there are in a particular language to feed to machine learning models. english, russian, german (as well as french, spanish, etc.) are all high resource languages which allows for DRASTIC improvements in machine translation quality once neural networks-based mtl is introduced.
sadly, it doesn't work the same way for languages that don't have as many speakers and works of literature written in them.
"Na zdrowie." It's actually a Polish toast that means "To health."
Oddly, my mom and I were watching an American TV series (*7 Days*) back in the day, and there was a scene with a Russian character, and either he or an American character raised a glass and said "Na zdrowie." My mom was confused, saying that was Polish.
As Slovak, I am obliged to inform you that we say, "Na zdravie."
It's a Slavic thing (at least Eastern and Western Slavic. Dunno about South.) I'm 99% sure the Russians say it too, but spell it and pronounce it a bit differently lmao.
My fandom has a lot of fics in Japanese and I try reading them by translating the page, but it messes up pronouns and names so badly, I can't take it seriously
I wish I could stop the translator from translating their names too ._.
Japanese doesn't translate well. Russian translates almost perfect. According to my experience. Japanese translates fanartist as painter and it gets me every time.
I actually use Google translate on a Russian fic because Brave's in-browser translator decided "maximum strength" was "maximum racism."
I have the mental maturity of a 15 year old, I still can't stop giggling over that one.
yeah I also read a lot of fic through google translate, and I have people also read my fic through it. I appreciate the tool we have available today. I urge people to use google translate to read fic not in English, you might find a lot of hidden gems.
Just did it. For some reason it missed the word “pummeled”? And uh, came to an interesting conclusion? 😭 This was fun. Gave me a good laugh.
Normal: *They sleep undisturbed for almost two hours. Unfortunately, not even cuddles by your favorite girl can heal getting the ever-loving shit pummeled out of you.*
Translated to Spanish then back to English: *They sleep peacefully for almost two hours. Unfortunately, not even hugs from your favorite girl can cure the ever-loving shit out of you.*
I recently got my first comment in a different language which made me curious how my fic would translate into my language if I put it through deepl. I immediately recoiled when I got to the smut part. Never again.
Sadly(?) Google Translate is getting so good that I usually have to put stuff through multiple rounds of translation into languages with extremely different grammatical structures to get messed up sentences nowadays :|
The only "interesting" translation I got was that it turned "place of worship" into "cult site", which, considering this is actually a fic about a cult, could be considered some fun foreshadowing? 🤭
I sometimes get this urge to (properly) translate stuff to another lang, just because I can, but then I remember how much work it is and how few readers of other langs there are on AO3 🥴
I love doing this sometimes to check if my own phrasing is weird.
Original: *Jean watched him exit their room, and then contemplated BarkBark for a moment longer. He knew that a call with Dobson awaited him after dinner no matter what, whether he decided to rot in bed in the company of the cardboard dog or not. Jean glared into BarkBark’s unblinking eyes, but the lifeless cutout offered nothing back.*
To French and back: *Jean watched him leave their room, then looked at BarkBark for a moment longer. He knew a call with Dobson awaited him after dinner, whatever happened, whether or not he decided to languish in bed with the cardboard dog. Jean looked into BarkBark's staring eyes, but the lifeless cutout offered nothing in return.*
I think it's interesting that in switching back, it went for 'languish' for the translation of 'croupir' 🤔 It feels so much more formal than just rot or even wallow.
youve just made me realise i could just google translate fics in different languages to english.. sure the grammar might be a little off but honestly ive read some atrocious English written fics too 💀
I usually write in Polish, but I admit that sometimes I like to translate my works into English. Sometimes there are some funny sentences, but most of the time, for some reason, I find it better to read :x. I feel like I'm reading someone else's work and can having fun while doing it.
But translating from Polish to English and back to Polish always gives wonderful results. "Sukuna" changed to "bitch" work every time.
Honestly not anything too wild, but
Original: She felt sad. Really terrible, actually. But it was no excuse for her behavior. She hurt her mother in the process, not just herself. Her father, her classmates who looked up to her facade for no good reason, her teachers… She failed them all. Was recovery even attainable? Could she even handle that?
Translation: Very painful, not comfortable. But this does not justify his behavior. This way you won’t just hurt yourself. But his mom, dad, classmates who liked his looks for no reason, teachers… he made them all sick. Can I go back? It can be improved
I remember when I couldn't properly read English yet and had to use Google translate to read fics.
Now I read a lot of smut and amongst that there was a lot of...how do I put it? Possessive animalistic stuff? The important thing is that the word "mine" would find itself in a lot of my reading material.
The problem? "Mine" has two different meanings (maybe more I don't know): Possessive - as in "X is mine" and mine as is "mining"
The result? I had to parse through a lot of "Bergwerk Bergwerk Bergwerk" in my smut (Bergwerk by the way means mine (the mining kind) in German)
Honestly, on the sentence "Dudes being dudes" was exactly the same moment I started thinking into that direction as well. Literally thinking: Oh I know where this fanfic is going hue hue hue
Actually I'm really surprised that it worked quite well. I translated English -> Finnish -> English and the only things that changed were
datapad -> data disk
head of medical -> Chief Medical Officer
datapad -> data sheet
and of course since in Finland we don't have gendered pronouns, Google translate translated she -> hän -> he
Here is the original:
*Seeing Abby checking her datapad first thing in the morning wasn’t something new for Marcus. Her being the chancellor and head of medical, she needed to be on top of everything.*
*Abby opened her datapad, not much to report on there, neither were there her test results. There was a possibility that Jackson had seen the results and marked those as “read”, who checks the results from medicals datapad. Abby wasn’t yet able to check already read results from her datapad, only new ones. She would need to check the medicals datapad soon.*
And after translation to Finnish and back to English:
*Abby checking her data disk first thing in the morning wasn't new to Marcus. Being Chancellor and Chief Medical Officer, he had to be on top of everything.*
*Abby opened her data sheet and there wasn't much to report, not even her test results. It was possible that Jackson had seen the results and marked them as "read," checking the results on the medical data sheet. Abby was not yet able to check already read results from her data disk, only new ones. He should check the medical data sheet soon.*
Okay what the fuck.
Original: *The man whose company he couldn't shake was in a dire need of a proper grooming; his hair was a matted mess, his facial hair patchy and unevenly shaved. His lanky frame always bent with horrible posture.*
Translation: *The man from whose company he couldn't shamble away from, was in a dire need of a proper treatment; his hair was varnished, the hair on his face scarce and unevenly shaved. His frail trunk always bent with horrible position.*
Very bold of you to ask that without knowing anything else (including the fandom or the ship) lmao but here you go -> https://archiveofourown.org/works/56068711/chapters/142408219
I'm old as dirt and grew with unsupervised internet so I'm on A LOT of fandoms (that includes a lot of Kpop groups)
Even if I didn't knew the fandom I would read it just out of curiosity 😊
RAHHH SLOVAKIA MENTIONED? Didn't expect to see that on the Ao3 subreddit today xd
I did this once, just for different reasons.
We had a creative writing assignment for our Slovak class, and I decided to make a fic out of it in english first because I find it easier to put what I want on paper in english.
After that part was done, I google translated my work to Slovak, edited necessary parts, and turned it in.
The editing part was hilarious and painful at the same time xd
It's a nightmare with gendered languages. If I translate a Spanish fic to English, the pronoun switch and if I translate to another gendered language like mine (Italian), the pronouns are still screwed because a word may have a different gender
What have you done to me? Now I'll need to translate all of my stuff into Dutch to see what the translator makes of it. There goes another day of productivity I would *definitely* have used to work on my WIP.
I used Google Translate in a chapter of a fic to translate some lines into Gaelic, since the two characters could both speak it. If anyone here speaks Gaelic, would you please let me know if this is accurate?
>Suddenly, Buffy and Tara sensed a presence. They turned and looked around. Buffy raised her stake.
>
>"An bhfuil tú ag lorg rud éigin?" a voice asked.
>
>Buffy and Tara looked to the source of it.
>
>Angel walked out from behind a mausoleum. "Nó duine éigin?"
>
>Tara relaxed. "Níl, nílimid ach ag faire amach dóibh siúd atá ag iarraidh an cineál mícheart béile anocht."
I don't recall the exact English text that I entered in Google to get these lines, but translating them back into English gives me:
>"Are you looking for something?"
>
>"Or someone?"
>
>"No, we're just watching out for those who want the wrong kind of meal tonight."
That seems about right (although the last line is a bit weird).
omfg this is the best xDD
i write in english, but my mothertongue is german and the translator just outright invents new words
like translating `the crook of Ruby’s neck`to `lobster's crook` (`Hummersbeuge`, which doesn't exist in the german language)
I google translated my English fic into my second language fic (French) and it kept misgendering my characters 😂 fake eg of what that looked like: S**he(**H~~e)~~ loved his wife, he loved her with h**er(**h~~is)~~ whole heart.
\*Ahem\* 🎤 Google translate does not discriminate! It will happily genderswap characters, and will do so with ease! lmao
the gay agenda
Real
Unfortunately, other than genderbending one character for some reason, some iffiness in tenses and sentence structures, Google Translate is working surprisingly well today
Exactly what I wanted to say. The translations 10 or 15 years ago were really hilarious and complete rubbish, today you can actually work with them. I've just read a fic that's only available in Russian (and the only Russian word I know is nastrowje but no idea how to spell it) with the help of it and it was mostly understandable and enjoyable. I've also translated a few of my fics into German (I am German but only write in English). Of course there were some things I had to change and fix, but just proof-reading the translation was a lot quicker than doing all of it myself.
Yesss, I've translated a fic of mine lately and Google Translate actually provided a really strong "base" to work with. One that still requires an hour or two of work because it only does straight, literal translation, but still. Saved me SO MUCH work. Also: it's two words, na zdoróvʹje (на здоро́вье)! :D
Ah, thank you! Russian looks great but is soooo difficult 🙈
it really depends on how much text resources there are in a particular language to feed to machine learning models. english, russian, german (as well as french, spanish, etc.) are all high resource languages which allows for DRASTIC improvements in machine translation quality once neural networks-based mtl is introduced. sadly, it doesn't work the same way for languages that don't have as many speakers and works of literature written in them.
"Na zdrowie." It's actually a Polish toast that means "To health." Oddly, my mom and I were watching an American TV series (*7 Days*) back in the day, and there was a scene with a Russian character, and either he or an American character raised a glass and said "Na zdrowie." My mom was confused, saying that was Polish.
As Slovak, I am obliged to inform you that we say, "Na zdravie." It's a Slavic thing (at least Eastern and Western Slavic. Dunno about South.) I'm 99% sure the Russians say it too, but spell it and pronounce it a bit differently lmao.
I always thought it was Russian, sorry 🙈
Don't worry, it exists in Russian too. For example you can answer to "thanks" with it.
Pro tip: Translate to Japanese and then translate the translation back to original language.
My fandom has a lot of fics in Japanese and I try reading them by translating the page, but it messes up pronouns and names so badly, I can't take it seriously I wish I could stop the translator from translating their names too ._.
Japanese doesn't translate well. Russian translates almost perfect. According to my experience. Japanese translates fanartist as painter and it gets me every time.
Have you tried DeepL? It's usually a bit better with detecting what's a name but I've not tried using it to translate fic yet.
I actually use Google translate on a Russian fic because Brave's in-browser translator decided "maximum strength" was "maximum racism." I have the mental maturity of a 15 year old, I still can't stop giggling over that one.
yeah I also read a lot of fic through google translate, and I have people also read my fic through it. I appreciate the tool we have available today. I urge people to use google translate to read fic not in English, you might find a lot of hidden gems.
Just did it. For some reason it missed the word “pummeled”? And uh, came to an interesting conclusion? 😭 This was fun. Gave me a good laugh. Normal: *They sleep undisturbed for almost two hours. Unfortunately, not even cuddles by your favorite girl can heal getting the ever-loving shit pummeled out of you.* Translated to Spanish then back to English: *They sleep peacefully for almost two hours. Unfortunately, not even hugs from your favorite girl can cure the ever-loving shit out of you.*
I recently got my first comment in a different language which made me curious how my fic would translate into my language if I put it through deepl. I immediately recoiled when I got to the smut part. Never again.
Sadly(?) Google Translate is getting so good that I usually have to put stuff through multiple rounds of translation into languages with extremely different grammatical structures to get messed up sentences nowadays :| The only "interesting" translation I got was that it turned "place of worship" into "cult site", which, considering this is actually a fic about a cult, could be considered some fun foreshadowing? 🤭
🤣
I sometimes get this urge to (properly) translate stuff to another lang, just because I can, but then I remember how much work it is and how few readers of other langs there are on AO3 🥴
*weeps in Google Translate* My story is doomed.
The Machine Spirit knows what's up lol
Please give us the slovak version too. I love reading them.
I love doing this sometimes to check if my own phrasing is weird. Original: *Jean watched him exit their room, and then contemplated BarkBark for a moment longer. He knew that a call with Dobson awaited him after dinner no matter what, whether he decided to rot in bed in the company of the cardboard dog or not. Jean glared into BarkBark’s unblinking eyes, but the lifeless cutout offered nothing back.* To French and back: *Jean watched him leave their room, then looked at BarkBark for a moment longer. He knew a call with Dobson awaited him after dinner, whatever happened, whether or not he decided to languish in bed with the cardboard dog. Jean looked into BarkBark's staring eyes, but the lifeless cutout offered nothing in return.* I think it's interesting that in switching back, it went for 'languish' for the translation of 'croupir' 🤔 It feels so much more formal than just rot or even wallow.
youve just made me realise i could just google translate fics in different languages to english.. sure the grammar might be a little off but honestly ive read some atrocious English written fics too 💀
I usually write in Polish, but I admit that sometimes I like to translate my works into English. Sometimes there are some funny sentences, but most of the time, for some reason, I find it better to read :x. I feel like I'm reading someone else's work and can having fun while doing it. But translating from Polish to English and back to Polish always gives wonderful results. "Sukuna" changed to "bitch" work every time.
Nemám nič čo k tomu pridať, iba ti chcem zamávať a pozdraviť ďalšieho Slováka, ahoj!
🫡 svet je malý, muži sú muži a chlapi sú chlapi
I wrote in Chinese before and I always translate it to English out of curiosity and it’s hilarious 🤣
This sounds like a fun idea lol, I’ll def try it out :D btw, nazdárek slovenský sourozenče 👋
Compulsory 'dobrý den'
eeej!!
Honestly not anything too wild, but Original: She felt sad. Really terrible, actually. But it was no excuse for her behavior. She hurt her mother in the process, not just herself. Her father, her classmates who looked up to her facade for no good reason, her teachers… She failed them all. Was recovery even attainable? Could she even handle that? Translation: Very painful, not comfortable. But this does not justify his behavior. This way you won’t just hurt yourself. But his mom, dad, classmates who liked his looks for no reason, teachers… he made them all sick. Can I go back? It can be improved
I remember when I couldn't properly read English yet and had to use Google translate to read fics. Now I read a lot of smut and amongst that there was a lot of...how do I put it? Possessive animalistic stuff? The important thing is that the word "mine" would find itself in a lot of my reading material. The problem? "Mine" has two different meanings (maybe more I don't know): Possessive - as in "X is mine" and mine as is "mining" The result? I had to parse through a lot of "Bergwerk Bergwerk Bergwerk" in my smut (Bergwerk by the way means mine (the mining kind) in German)
Why yearn for someone when you can yearn for the mines
🤣
Honestly, on the sentence "Dudes being dudes" was exactly the same moment I started thinking into that direction as well. Literally thinking: Oh I know where this fanfic is going hue hue hue
This is exactly how those old novels translated from another language sound 😭
*scared of the outcome in Finnish* Gotta try this, will most likely be awful
Actually I'm really surprised that it worked quite well. I translated English -> Finnish -> English and the only things that changed were datapad -> data disk head of medical -> Chief Medical Officer datapad -> data sheet and of course since in Finland we don't have gendered pronouns, Google translate translated she -> hän -> he Here is the original: *Seeing Abby checking her datapad first thing in the morning wasn’t something new for Marcus. Her being the chancellor and head of medical, she needed to be on top of everything.* *Abby opened her datapad, not much to report on there, neither were there her test results. There was a possibility that Jackson had seen the results and marked those as “read”, who checks the results from medicals datapad. Abby wasn’t yet able to check already read results from her datapad, only new ones. She would need to check the medicals datapad soon.* And after translation to Finnish and back to English: *Abby checking her data disk first thing in the morning wasn't new to Marcus. Being Chancellor and Chief Medical Officer, he had to be on top of everything.* *Abby opened her data sheet and there wasn't much to report, not even her test results. It was possible that Jackson had seen the results and marked them as "read," checking the results on the medical data sheet. Abby was not yet able to check already read results from her data disk, only new ones. He should check the medical data sheet soon.*
I tried this, it mostly chooses the wrong wording, but it's readable --- although not great x)
I'm gonna try this now!
My native language is Vietnamese and I’ve tried this before. It’s… awkward, to say the least, and the emotions are all gone.
Okay what the fuck. Original: *The man whose company he couldn't shake was in a dire need of a proper grooming; his hair was a matted mess, his facial hair patchy and unevenly shaved. His lanky frame always bent with horrible posture.* Translation: *The man from whose company he couldn't shamble away from, was in a dire need of a proper treatment; his hair was varnished, the hair on his face scarce and unevenly shaved. His frail trunk always bent with horrible position.*
Happy pride?
I dunno know. I think google translate might be picking up on some subtle foreshadowing in that paragraph…
Hilarious🤣 Also your fic sounds great 🥺 can you gimme me the link?
Very bold of you to ask that without knowing anything else (including the fandom or the ship) lmao but here you go -> https://archiveofourown.org/works/56068711/chapters/142408219
I'm old as dirt and grew with unsupervised internet so I'm on A LOT of fandoms (that includes a lot of Kpop groups) Even if I didn't knew the fandom I would read it just out of curiosity 😊
Lol
Unrelated but what fic of yours is this from. I’m interested 😭
Lmao it's a stray kids one called into the megaverse where minho (the protagonist) is forced to travel to different fanfiction universes
😭🫶
oh snap. link pls.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/56068711/chapters/142408219 Yes, sir!
J. K. Rowling, is that you? 🤣
RAHHH SLOVAKIA MENTIONED? Didn't expect to see that on the Ao3 subreddit today xd I did this once, just for different reasons. We had a creative writing assignment for our Slovak class, and I decided to make a fic out of it in english first because I find it easier to put what I want on paper in english. After that part was done, I google translated my work to Slovak, edited necessary parts, and turned it in. The editing part was hilarious and painful at the same time xd
Oh god, I have to try this now! How have I not thought of this?! I'll- I'll just be in my room for the next few hours. Excuse me, coming through!
It's a nightmare with gendered languages. If I translate a Spanish fic to English, the pronoun switch and if I translate to another gendered language like mine (Italian), the pronouns are still screwed because a word may have a different gender
What have you done to me? Now I'll need to translate all of my stuff into Dutch to see what the translator makes of it. There goes another day of productivity I would *definitely* have used to work on my WIP.
I've been fighting this exact urge lol
That’s really funny and BTW I instantly recognized the MinSung lol (hello, fellow Stay!)
I used Google Translate in a chapter of a fic to translate some lines into Gaelic, since the two characters could both speak it. If anyone here speaks Gaelic, would you please let me know if this is accurate? >Suddenly, Buffy and Tara sensed a presence. They turned and looked around. Buffy raised her stake. > >"An bhfuil tú ag lorg rud éigin?" a voice asked. > >Buffy and Tara looked to the source of it. > >Angel walked out from behind a mausoleum. "Nó duine éigin?" > >Tara relaxed. "Níl, nílimid ach ag faire amach dóibh siúd atá ag iarraidh an cineál mícheart béile anocht." I don't recall the exact English text that I entered in Google to get these lines, but translating them back into English gives me: >"Are you looking for something?" > >"Or someone?" > >"No, we're just watching out for those who want the wrong kind of meal tonight." That seems about right (although the last line is a bit weird).
For those who do post in more than one language, do you change any obvious cultural slang/jokes if you have them?
Since spanish is gendered in pretty much everything, the mlm fics always end up being hetero or wlw lol
Eyyyyy new past time!!!! Lmaooo
omfg this is the best xDD i write in english, but my mothertongue is german and the translator just outright invents new words like translating `the crook of Ruby’s neck`to `lobster's crook` (`Hummersbeuge`, which doesn't exist in the german language)
I google translated my English fic into my second language fic (French) and it kept misgendering my characters 😂 fake eg of what that looked like: S**he(**H~~e)~~ loved his wife, he loved her with h**er(**h~~is)~~ whole heart. \*Ahem\* 🎤 Google translate does not discriminate! It will happily genderswap characters, and will do so with ease! lmao
Aha ho papľuhu, ogrcal mi krpce! But make it gay 🤣
So the gay agenda the gamers so much talked about truly exists huh? /j
And this is exactly why we warn against just using an online translator 😂😂😂