How accurate is 'Google translation' ?

I need to translate a letter from english to Hungarian. How accurate is 'Google translate' ?|||About as accurate as you would be with a dictionary and basic grammar: in other words, not very.





You can get a good idea of the "quality" of the result by having it translate a paragraph or two from Hungarian into English. Here's an example (from www.arcanum.hu):





"脷jabb 60,000 db k茅peslappal b艖v铆tett眉k a Katal贸gust, imm谩r 210,000 darab k茅peslap 茅rhet艖 el ezen a port谩lon. Ebben az 茅vben a Zempl茅ni M煤zeum gy疟jtem茅nyeivel gazdagodott a Katal贸gus."





which it translates as:





"60.000 pieces can later expanded the catalog cards, 210,000 pieces of card now available on this portal. This year, the Zempl茅n Museum collection was enriched with the catalog."





What it actually says:





"We have expanded the Catalog with an additional 60000 picture postcards; the portal now offers access to 210000 examples of postcards. This year, the Catalog was enriched by the incorporation of the Zempl茅n Museum's collections."





As you can see, the machine makes mistakes not only in word choice ("catalog cards" and "pieces of card" instead of _picture postcards_), but also in interpretation of grammar (the direction of transfer of the Zempl茅n museum's collection).





In general, machine translation is useful when going from a language you don't know to a language that you do know. Google is one of the few online offerings that actually does Hungarian, but I wouldn't use it for more than a word or two.|||Juli makes what I think is the most important point: that "In general, machine translation is useful when going from a language you don't know to a language that you do know."


For example, let's say you receive a letter in a foreign language that you don't know. You have no idea what it's about. Put that letter through Googletranslate into English, and although the grammar will probably be horrible, you'll probably at least be able to make out whether it's something you need to know about, or should just throw away immediately.


But when you put something in your own language through GoogleTranslate into a foreign language, you have no way of knowing how well it's been translated. It may be complete rubbish. At best it will be clumsy and at worst it will be incomprehensible.|||My interpreter friend tells me "Google translation" is only as good as the information it has been fed (programmed with), so many idiomatic and/ or colloquial expressions will NOT be translated accurately. Certain languages which place a lot of emphasis on gender, such as German and French, also may NOT be translated accurately (instead of saying "it", the translator may give "he" or "she", according to the "gender" of the noun -- which, in fact, may be neutral, like a business or group).


And, unlike a person, the mechanical translator isn't capable of dealing with nuances between languages.


I use it as a basis and then compare with other translators. If what I'm translating is complicated or "delicate", I'll then check with a human being.|||Be very aware that if you use any figurative language at all, any similes and metaphors, any proverbs., any idiomatic sayings or slang expressions, it will translate them literally - a machine does not understand connotations, it can only give you word for word what is there. So your letter might end up looking a bit peculiar to a Hugarian - that's if you're lucky, it could of course turn out to be insulting............. so if you MUST use machine translator, keep your original very simple and keep your fingers crossed.....|||Honest answer: it is not accurate. it does not understand, so it doesn't know how to handle homonyms.


If you use the word "calf" to indicate a part of your leg, chances are it will be translated into the young of a cow. Fixed expressions, such as proverbs and sayings...forget about it.





Someone said it would be as good as you with a dictionary, but in reality it would be worse. You can understand/take an educated guess which homonym is used, it cannot. the only edge it has on you with a dictionary is speed...|||It depends on the from and to languages. If they are similar (Spanish to English to German to French, for example. Or Korean to Japanese), then it's pretty accurate. If they are very different (like English to Japanese), it's really rough.|||The Google translator translates words 100% accurate, but when it comes to sentences it usually makes mistakes, like using wrong future or past forms...|||My language teacher told me google translate is not 100% accurate and makes mistakes|||Poor. It handles single words, but is poor at sentences and phrase.


The more correctly you write, the better the output.|||Very