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It's well-known on this community that you can't trust any Latin translation from Google Translate. A comment about translating goatherd with Google Translate got me thinking, though. What is the most absurd or ridiculous translation you have seen from Google Translate for something in Latin?

If this question doesn't seem appropriate or useful let me know and I will delete it. I thought it might be a humorous but useful way to illustrate how much someone should not what they get from Google Translate for Latin.

Adam
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    This might be better as a community Wiki q&a? There can't really be a right-and-wrong here. – cmw Mar 25 '21 at 17:49
  • @C.M.Weimer Good idea! I discussed it with Adam in chat and it made sense to both, so I changed the status. – Joonas Ilmavirta Mar 25 '21 at 19:54
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    It's since been fixed, but a few years ago Google Translate said "Arma virumque cano" was "Chairman Meow." – jwodder Mar 25 '21 at 22:23
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    That's a good one even if it's fixed. You should post that as an answer, @jwodder! – Adam Mar 25 '21 at 22:26
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    Google Translate is open to crowdsourcing. Feel free to fix them (and make all these answers moot)! – Andrew T. Mar 26 '21 at 02:13
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    I'd like to add, answerers, please include what the Latin actually means! – user2357112 Mar 26 '21 at 07:36
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    @AndrewT. It seems some of the stranger results are precisely the result of Google Translate's openness to crowdsourcing … – Sebastian Koppehel Mar 26 '21 at 19:36
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    @AndrewT. This may sound overly pessimistic, but I think Google Translate is beyond repair when it comes to Latin. Unless they change how it works structurally, I would consider most efforts wasted. Perhaps we could fix the 100 most commonly asked phrases, but then it's a phrase list rather than a translator. – Joonas Ilmavirta Mar 27 '21 at 00:03
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    @AndrewT. Why should Google, one of the most profitable companies on earth, rely on free labor from experts to help fix their broken products? Are they that really that awful of a company? Or are they just massively incompetent? – cmw Mar 27 '21 at 01:37
  • @JoonasIlmavirta That really isn't what community wiki is for. This is just not a good question for Stack Exchange. – corsiKa Mar 27 '21 at 02:17
  • @corsiKa Different SE sites use CW differently, and I think a wiki-type list of bad translations works well in that format. A lot of people seem to be happy with this question and its status. If you disagree, you are free to vote down and for closing. – Joonas Ilmavirta Mar 27 '21 at 09:26
  • @JoonasIlmavirta Well I mean, it doesn't really help to downvote a CW post, but honestly, if this is on-topic, you should consider updating your help page. https://imgur.com/a/7x3Qrjb – corsiKa Mar 27 '21 at 14:54
  • @corsiKa That help page is not editable by local mods, so any such change would have to be network-wide. I prefer to see rules as guidelines rather than hard rules; if our core users like something, then it's de facto on topic even if it appears de iure off topic. There are also different kinds of opinions; experts' professional opinions are very useful content. This question further underlines that Google Translate is unreliable, and that's a good message. With that all said, I agree that we shouldn't have too many questions like this. – Joonas Ilmavirta Mar 27 '21 at 15:00

7 Answers7

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This one was mentioned in the linked question and appears to be still valid:

dolor sit amet > "carrots"

This translation is marked as verified by community and no other options are given.

These three Latin words are from the nonsensical lorem ipsum text often used for placeholders. The words are all valid Latin but don't make a sensible sentence. It's something close to "pain may be may love". Nothing to do with root vegetables!

Joonas Ilmavirta
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    Does anyone know why the translator confused dolor sit amet with carrots? – Ben Kovitz Mar 25 '21 at 22:35
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    @BenKovitz I guess someone entered it manually as a contribution from the community. It's sad if it's so open to trolling. – Joonas Ilmavirta Mar 25 '21 at 22:45
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    Note that “dolor sit amet" are the third to fifth word of Lorem Ipsum. So maybe two placeholder texts were thought to be actual translations of each other (one being Lorem Ipsum, the other featuring carrots). On the other hand, this also makes this a likely troll target. – Wrzlprmft Mar 26 '21 at 11:07
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    PS: Larger parts of Lorem Ipsum (mind that parts of it are not proper Latin by any standard.) are translated to pretty much bogus: “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt” → “Lorem ipsum carrots, enhanced undergraduate developer, but they do occaecat time and vitality”. Note how the English translation features a Latin word that does not appear in the Latin input. – Wrzlprmft Mar 26 '21 at 11:16
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    @Wrzlprmft It's not a surprise to get garbage out if we put garbage in, but the garbage does appear surprisingly creative. This could indeed be a case of placeholder texts, but at least the verification of the carrot translation is an act of trolling. And even dolor sit amet is not a meaningful sentence, but the individual words are valid and do not correspond to the translation at all. I would have been happy enough with "pain may love". – Joonas Ilmavirta Mar 26 '21 at 11:23
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    The phrase "dolor sit amet" (as well as much of "lorem ipsum", albeit in mangled form) is from a real Latin text, namely Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. The relevant passage is: "neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit, amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem." – Kef Schecter Mar 28 '21 at 01:53
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    @Wrzlprmft you are probably right. Google Translate makes heavy use of machine translation, which in turn uses texts that are thought to be "equivalent". What would bother me more than trolls is that someone thought Lorem Ipsum was actual Latin and used it to train a machine translation. – CLAbeel Apr 02 '21 at 14:00
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Audiatur et altera pars is translated "let the other party", reminiscent of "let them eat cake".

This is also verified by Google Translate contributors. Isn't there some Latin.SE API so Google Translate can tap into the knowledge here?

Edit: per user2357112 supports Monica's comment, the phrase means "let the other side be heard as well", which is a cornerstone of most legal systems.

Stephan Kolassa
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    I love the misreading, but I suspect that "party" here is a noun, i.e. "side." So it's just missing the verb ("be heard") – brianpck Mar 27 '21 at 01:49
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Per tweet, it seems (and verified) Google Translate renders Latine as English.

https://translate.google.com/?sl=la&tl=en&text=Ego%20Latine%20loquor%20&op=translate

enter image description here

d_e
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    If only StackExchange had a facepalm reaction. – Adam Mar 28 '21 at 19:46
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    @Adam To be fair, I've seen some wildly incorrect claims made across StackExchange that were upvoted and accepted (and sometimes downvoted and accepted regardless). – cmw Mar 28 '21 at 19:51
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    Also, getting rid of the ego yields "I speak plainly." – cmw Mar 29 '21 at 21:05
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    @Adam you can actually use emoji now: ‍♂️ – Rafael Apr 02 '21 at 10:17
  • This still has not been fixed. @Rafael With no ego, it yields "sPEAK PLAINLY." It's so broken! – cmw Aug 07 '21 at 05:29
  • To be fair there is some desire for this kind of translation. Saying "Speak English!" to someone in English may have the meaning "speak intelligibly", so while the meaning of the words is not the same, the intent and meaning of the whole sentence is preserved perfectly. Neither may be always desirable though, since this depends on the purpose of the translation (translating prose vs. webpages), and this kind of meta-language problems Google Translate cannot solve. – IS4 Apr 27 '23 at 09:37
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So I'm just gonna go ahead and post the answer that started it.

While translating "sheperd" via Google translate yields "pastor" as expected, translating "goatherd" does not yield the expected "pastor" but rather "unus caprimulgus" which back-translates as one of a kind of bird named for its myth of drinking goat's milk.

I actually had somebody argue with me that "goatherd" -> "pastor" was not correct but rather "unus caprimulgus" was. I can't imagine the line of thinking that would cause somebody to actually believe its correct. Even a smattering of Latin would produce something closer to "one goat".

Joshua
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    ”...named for its myth of drinking goat’s milk” — as in “chupacabra”? – Jim Garrison Mar 27 '21 at 04:43
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    A pastor isn't specifically a goatherd, and a caprimulgus is at least a milker of goats (in addition to specifically being a nightjar). For "goatherd" I would expect to get back caprarius, though, and the unus is completely indefensible. – Cairnarvon Mar 27 '21 at 18:40
  • @Cairnarvon: I don't actually know if Latin has a separate word for goatherd but I know that both Greek and Hebrew do not but rather the same word was used in the time of antiqity for both shepherd and goatherd. – Joshua Mar 27 '21 at 19:53
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    @Joshua I don't know Hebrew but that's not true for Greek. ποιμήν is a generic herdsman and defaults strongly to sheep alone, οἰοπόλος is specifically a shepherd (οἶς 'sheep'), αἰπόλος is specifically a goatherd (αἴξ 'goat'). The same is true for Latin: pastor is a generic herdsman defaulting to sheep, opilio is sheep, caprarius is goats (opilio is rare and a loan, but the other two are very transparent constructions). Goats and sheep were kept for very different purposes, it doesn't make sense to conflate them. – Cairnarvon Mar 27 '21 at 23:21
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Another howler (to go with the carrots perhaps):

Sacrificium laudis → Ham

Credit where it is due, this one was discovered and pointed out on Twitter by John Byron Kuhner. As of this writing, it can still be reproduced.

What it really means is "sacrifice of praise," and it comes from Psalm 49:14 (Psalm 50 in English bibles). I have no idea how this translation happened.

Sebastian Koppehel
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  • It's been fixed, but if you click on laudis, Ham is still a possible suggestion. – cmw Aug 07 '21 at 05:32
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Oh wow, it's almost like this question was made just for me. I was writing a Latin crossword exercise, where the clues and answers were both in Latin. I wrote the clue "Semper dicebat Carthaginem esse delendam" ("He was always saying Carthage must be destroyed", the answer being "Cato Maior"). I decided to put this clue into GT and it came back, "THE ELDER always said." Apparently whoever had seeded the translator didn't strip out quote attributions first.

(GT no longer provides this translation, possibly since I submitted a correction. I'll admit I kinda wish I hadn't.)

Kef Schecter
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From Wikipedia's Fermat's Last Theorem; Fermat's conjecture is the famous note in the margin that boggled mathematicians for centuries.

Original there:

Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos & generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.

English translation there:

It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

which I used in a comment below Why do some call the no-hair conjecture the no-hair theorem?.

Putting Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet into google translate returns

The shortness of this brink, he could not contain her.

Putting "Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet" into google translate returns "The shortness of this brink, he could not contain her."

uhoh
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    You know, all things considered, that's weird but not terrible! What's strange is that it doesn't know to drop the pronoun if there's a named subject. But out of context it makes a little sense...if you squint... – cmw Aug 07 '21 at 05:31
  • @cmw yes, after returning today and squinting I see what you mean; it's probably just the pronouns that are throwing me off. – uhoh Aug 07 '21 at 23:32
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    Yes, it's not correct or even good, and it definitely showcases what's wrong with Google translate, but could be worse, I guess. – cmw Aug 07 '21 at 23:35