
I’ve watched Aki’s (YT: Akidearest) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwodkd2okR4) about her only using google translate to text Joey (YT: Theanimeman) in Japanese to see if he understands, it turns out at the beginning he could get the gist, but later on it went wrong, as he did not understand any of the harder ones as he’d figured she is using google translate.
She called telling him it’s only for her video, he advised her not to use google translate as the translations are shitty, he even recalled the sentence that used 私 like 7 times in a row, which is not how Japanese works, noting it’s far different from English.
Also, do you find the auto-translation results from social media posts from English into Slovak understandable (especially if they typed slang like LOL, TL;DR, TGIF, FTW, how r u, etc.), or just plain Google translate quality? Not to forget that Weeaboos use google translate a lot for translating (EN > JP) and it’s… just god awful as it’s not really how Japanese people talk IRL, including the fact they are talking like anime characters, those bunch are not taking their learning seriously.
I won’t be talking about travel phrases as those will be correct as they are basic, I’m talking about more complex sentences with cultural nuances or that utilize slang.
Would you still understand if they translated responses via google translate (voice) into Slovak something like:
* “I was hittin’ up with the boys upon our reuinion, asking each other how our lives are turning out since 15 years elapsed, I’ve noticed that only 4 of us showed up, as one of them was not present, ‘Were missing one. Where is he?’ I enquired, ‘I have bad news, he’s been incarcerated for drug possession and the intent to distrubute, as it turns out he’s giving out the ‘good’ stuff to minors.’ My friend explained ‘Damn. But what a prick he is for giving them out to kids.’ I added. At least we know he’s in the slammer, he ended up becoming a junkie, as the tell tate signs began to display as soon as we’d entered freshman year during college, but we’re too concentrated on our studies. There were rumors about a drug dealer in our campus but I’d never expected it to be him.”
* “There was an obscure account that commented on my TikTok, amongst the lines of ‘I am so horny right now. Will you hit me up.’ My thought and reaction is like; ‘My post is not sexual at all. What on earth is he talking about?! I’m just an 16yo teenager’ My BFF and I were streaming our moves we learnt from dance class for our viewers, the both us were thrown off by the comment, other audiences who are in the live chat were like ‘What the f\*ck is the guy on about?!’ or ‘Dude, shut up. Leave your dirty ass outta here.’ But we’d brushed it off as some troll who is trying to kill our fun, but at the same time creeped out as we’re still 16. It did not stop there, realzing he is not trolling as he continued writing inappropiate comments about my butt, he’d even made comments about my BFF also fantazing about him going to f\*ck her, he claimed to have our personal details such as residental address or our legal names that he’ll find us and commit horrible things. he’s trying to hook up with me as if this is tinder, mind you it is NOT. I abruptly ended the stream explaining to our audience that there’s a predator, I took screenshots of the comments as evidence to show to authorities, I blocked the creep right away. My mom freaked out as we explained it to her, she called my friends mom as well, the reaction was the same. I told my friends from school about the creep, they were horrified, I can’t blame them. We’d heard about stuff like this before, but I’d never anticipate ourselves becoming the victim. My cousin is a cop, I showed the messages to him, he became very concerned about our safety as the creep might’ve doxxed us.”
* “We had a zoom meeting since one of our staff was tested positive for COVID, organizing it was a pain as not all employees are familiar with the concept of virtual meet ups, especially boomers. As we commenced the meeting, one of our employees was at his own residence when it was obvious he’d had a towel wrapped around his waist, he’d just stepped out of the shower. ‘He’d should dress up first, I mean… come on. It’s common sense, dude.’ I thought, as he was about to get his phone, the towel fell off, revealing his ass crack, everyone was thrown off guard as our boss called him cxclaiming: ‘Put your clothes on. I think you should know that before joining the call!’ Mind you, the meeting does not only consist of our staff, the execs were also present, making this interaction VERY awkward. My boss apologized on behalf of the company right after.”
2 comments
Understand? Yes. Would it sounds off? Most definitely.
I put both of these texts through Google translate for the fun of it and some things are just translated word for word, some phrases turn out badly, and some synonyms are wrong. E.g. instead of an “ass crack”, Google decided to translate it as “a cracked (snapped/broken) ass”.
Also, as Slovak is a gendered language, Google chose to use masculine first person. If this was coming from a woman, that would be an immediate giveaway (not that it’s hard to spot it otherwise).
In general is not bad, but it’s definitely not how a native would say/write the same things.
Don’t write long complex sentences.