Is there any point to online translators? I don’t think I’ve had one worthwhile result. One reader just forwarded me this five-star Amazon review from the Japanese version of my novella The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke and wondered if I could make any sense of it. It was translated from Japanese to English by Google’s Babel Fish:
“Mercury of the queen this picture makes tune in motif, this time mark [chiyadobon] being awarded tailoring and the English fantastic literature grand prix in fantastic literature. What kind of big picture 54cm×39cm where you think and starts and, passes. Thinking, without looking into, as for this picture those which could be caught in the mental hospital. There is no such a large expectation. When so you look at this picture, steadily it becomes large. Feeling of size is gone in any case. You have not looked at such a picture. Just the [zu] paragraph which is not. After so looking at this picture thoroughly, when you read this book, this writer it is enormous, you understand. Like this picture it is small to the last, it passes shortly only volume. So this is the work where feeling of size is gone. Seeing too much television of recent card magic?….”
Well, the problem with translators is that they only adjust the language into its most immediate direct translation and not into idiomatic English (or idiomatic “insert language”). The translation itself is probably not that awful (I don’t know Japanese, so I can’t say for sure), just not adjusted for the spoken word. It sucks, but that’s why we still need to learn the languages…
just be grateful that it isn’t a cupboard and you don’t have to assemble it!