Comments on: Google Needs French Lessons; Translates “Vimeo” to “YouTube”

By: Google Translate, Added to the Navigation Menu | Techno Portal

Google Translate, Added to the Navigation Menu | Techno Portal — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:14:17 +0000

[...] statistical translation system doesn’t always produce coherent translations and sometimes proper nouns are translated incorrectly, Google Translate constantly improves as more parallel text adjusts the language [...]

By: Bernard P.

Bernard P. — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:39:58 +0000

This story remember me Google maps some years ago: If you asked directions from New York to Paris, one indication said: “Swim 3826 km to Paris…”

By: Para Google sólo existe YouTube | Punto Geek

Para Google sólo existe YouTube | Punto Geek — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:47:09 +0000

[...] que devuelve es “YouTube videos”. El experimento original fué hecho por la gente de TechCrunch traduciendo de inglés a francés, pero de español a inglés pasa exactamente lo [...]

By: Google Translate, Friend or Foe? Ask Vimeo

Google Translate, Friend or Foe? Ask Vimeo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:57:48 +0000

[...] recent TechCrunch article penned by Leena Rao posed the common question: How does one say Vimeo in [...]

By: Episode 9: February 19, 2009 : Tech Gang Show

Episode 9: February 19, 2009 : Tech Gang Show — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:52:49 +0000

[...] Loses Hulu Judge Dismisses Google Street View Case Google moves Gmail offline on iPhone/Android Google Needs French Lessons; Translates “Vimeo” to “YouTube” Facebook terms of service change then retraction Apple says jailbreaking is illegal Xbox Live [...]

By: Mike P.

Mike P. — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:14:37 +0000

Wow this is SO important, thank for reporting!

By: les madras

les madras — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:46:14 +0000

this is only indicative of how google drives traffic to youtube. most searches will find a video on youtube that makes passing mention before you find the most relevant link on the topic. google used to show the youtube links up top, now they show them just above the fold after the anti-trust scrutiny of the yahoo deal.

By: Jean Claude

Jean Claude — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:06:35 +0000

Google it’s not perfect

By: Zafarali Ahmed

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:35:25 +0000

This happened a year or so ago
google translate thought “Nintendo Wii” was “Playstation”
http://www.yout...re=channel_page

http://twitter.com/zafarali

By: SirMit

SirMit — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:13:55 +0000

Same problem in Vietnamese.
From VNese: Chia sẻ video clip.vn
(Clip.vn is the popular video sharing site in Vietnam)

To: YouTube video sharing

>> I think Google picks some well-known video sharing websites in some languages (some countries) and “translate” to Youtube.
(An advice from Google)

By: HatLord

HatLord — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:58:07 +0000

@Leena – the translations are not done by humans but by machines with their algorithmic brains. So, I think your question (i.e. “Is this a glitch or some Easter egg hidden by a French Google engineer as an inside joke?”) might very well have nothing to do with it.

http://www.goog...ranslation.html

By: vid/meo « Angelegenheiten

vid/meo « Angelegenheiten — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:59:58 +0000

[...] Wer besitzt YouTube? Richtig. Google Translate übertreibt es mit der Corporate Identity aber dann doch ein [...]

By: meneame.net

meneame.net — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:59:29 +0000

Google necesita clases de francés (ENG)…

Curiosa traducción que hace el google translator de un texto en el que aparece vimeo (unun site para subir videos)…

By: Colnector

Colnector — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:38:20 +0000

Anti-trust??? naaah….
See my post: http://blog.col...th-adsense.html

By: Colnector

Colnector — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:37:53 +0000

Hey Josh, I read what you wrote and have used my own learning algorithms to translate it: “This is the result of Google’s strategy to make sure that Google-related sites and services are always preferred. Everything that has a correlation to Google is obviously better than anything that doesn’t. Like translating “Best search engine” in English to “Google” in Web-ish.”

No offense intended :p

By: Andras

Andras — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:18:56 +0000

Bad point for Google !

By: J. Peterson

J. Peterson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:38:35 +0000

I remember a similar easter-egg was in Adobe PageMill. The spell checker would flag “FrontPage” as a spelling error and offer “PageMill” as a correction.

[For those who tuned in late: FrontPage was Microsoft's competing web page editor]

By: fb15720349

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:36:57 +0000

pretty soon they’ll translate “how to fight the DMCA” into “nonsense”

By: Organic Search Engine Optimisation

Organic Search Engine Optimisation — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:17:57 +0000

hahahaha like others I want to know how you came across such an issue?

By: Vauman

Vauman — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:59:48 +0000

I guess it has something to do with their “Suggest a better translation”. I can imagine that this one runs automatically. Means: Enough people suggest a better translation and google check their translations and replace the old one.

By: Wei Zhu

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:31:20 +0000

Very funny

By: venkat

venkat — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:18:38 +0000

It is definitely a glitch they translated Vimeo to Youtube ,hope Google will correct it soon.

By: Hemanth

Hemanth — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:56:47 +0000

It’s a damn ester egg!

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:44:15 +0000

@Josh —

Google is using Statistical Machine Translation.. it is a little more complicated than just casting it off of Bayesian.

The idea behind SMT is that Google looks to see if words can be replaced with each other. In the most basic terms, it notices that many times when someone writes a sentence about YouTube, the same type of words/phrases around it are also common for Vimeo. It is a very cleaver method of using user generated content to come up with translation of texts that normally dictionaries would not be able to provide.

By: NickeyD

NickeyD — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:24:26 +0000

Google’s machine dependence at its best.