{"id":7424,"date":"2016-09-21T12:35:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T12:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=7424"},"modified":"2016-09-21T12:35:36","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T12:35:36","slug":"google-translate-fails-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=7424","title":{"rendered":"Google Translate fails again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2016\/09\/james_casson.jpg\" alt=\"James Casson headshot\" width=\"150\" height=\"236\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-7441\" \/>In <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hamilton,_New_Zealand\">Hamilton, New Zealand<\/a>,  mayoral candidate James Casson&#8217;s bid to appeal to Maori voters went terribly wrong, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/national\/politics\/84398001\/hamilton-candidates-google-translation-misguided-gibberish-maori-likely-to-switch-off\">NZ news site Stuff reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Casson used Google Translate to get his message across in te reo <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/M%C4%81ori_language\">Maori<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As a consequence, his election address dropped through the letterboxes of Maori voters made an impact for all the wrong reasons, with the unintelligible jumble of words and phrases being described by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.waikato.ac.nz\/\">Waikato University<\/a> language expert Tom Roa as &#8220;<em>very, very, very poor<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>Another Waikato University lecturer, Te Taka Keegan, who teaches computer science and worked on Google Translate remarked: &#8220;The gibberish that is written in the second part of this bio is barely recognisable as te reo Maori, it is disrespectful to the Maori language.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When queried, Mr. Casson said he was unaware of how his profile was translated, stating that he gave his English version to a &#8220;Maori woman&#8221; at his office to get it done.<\/p>\n<p>Stuff carried out its own test, copying Casson&#8217;s English language text into Google Translate and receiving in return &#8220;<em>a word-for-word, error-ridden version of the official Hamilton City Council<\/em>&#8220;, missing prepositions, articles and connecting words.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newshub.co.nz\/nznews\/hamilton-mayoral-candidate-james-cassons-te-reo-gets-lost-in-translation-2016092012\">According to Newshub<\/a>, another New Zealand news site, a translation back into English of Mr. Casson&#8217;s botched Maori translation reads as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Work James 26 years inside New Zealand Police, before officer Charge of Northland, Hamilton community Police centre Flagstaff.<\/p>\n<p>Work overseas like a peace keeper in Bougainville, Papua new Guinea, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Timor to the United Nations.<\/p>\n<p>Return the good community, work the people work to safe. James worked for Police to build safe Hamilton for you.<\/p>\n<p>Straight ahead [the text then seems to be another Pacific language]. faitotonu mo e angatonu aia takitahi. KORE ki Mita Water, paying Rate for dinner Council\/feast for councillors using a free Corporate Box at Stadium Waikato or by councillors.<\/p>\n<p>Free waka on some of the adds being used of Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>Working towards finishing vagrants in Auckland.<\/p>\n<p>Resources HCC maintenence, paddlers trying to hold into a beautiful looking Hamilton.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The moral of this story is that if you want a decent translation, you&#8217;re still better of with a human being than machine translation and this is likely to be the case for many years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Hamilton, New Zealand, mayoral candidate James Casson&#8217;s bid to appeal to Maori voters went terribly wrong, NZ news site Stuff reports. Why? Mr. Casson used Google Translate to get his message across in te reo Maori. As a consequence, his election address dropped through the letterboxes of Maori voters made an impact for all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,9],"tags":[10,22,23],"class_list":["post-7424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-politics","category-tech","tag-facepalm","tag-language","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7424"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7442,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions\/7442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}