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Most of the times the automated translations are barely readable and, worst of all, ambiguous. If the languages have differing sentence structure then it becomes garbage (Japanese to Italian is hilarious).
Automated translations are easily recongnized and they immediately tarnish the quality of the product.
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I read about computer translations when I was a teenager, 40+ years ago. In those days, it was essentially used by military "intelligence", to classify documents as "worthy of having a translator make a proper translation of it" or "probably void of interesting information".
Sometimes, I use Google Translate in a similar manner. E.g. if I consider buying a BD movie, I piock up the subtitles from a subtitle website to get an idea of what the movie is about. Some of those "artsy" or "anthropologic" movies may lack subtitles in a language I master, so I pick one of those avaliable and use Google Translate to give a rough idea.
I do the same when I hear songs that I like, for its musical qualities, when I cannot understand the lyrics: Often, I can search up the lyrics in the original language, but with no translation available. Then, Google Translate can give me enough clues so that I get a rough idea what the song is about.
Also, when some reader makes comments e.g. at YouTube in a language I do not master, I can roughly understand what his comment saying.
In cases like that, literary quality is not essential, and Google Translate will do the job well enough. But I leave it at that.
Also, when Google Translate cannot help me, or I suspect that it gives me the wrong translation, I frequently use Wikipedia: I look up the term in Wikipedia of the source language, and then switch to the destination language (or another language that I master). For certain classes of words this is far more reliable, like flower/plant and animal names, religious terms etc. Obviously, the word-by-word translation is so time consuming that I can do it only for specific terms, not for the entire text. But it gives me a guarantee that I do not choose a crazy translation: You will immediately see that "lead" in "lead guitar" does not translate to "bly" in Norwegian  . Even though "steel" in "steel guitar" is the metal, it is not so with "lead guitar".
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And I used it to set a complex system from the only documentation available, which was in Russian. Yet I won't ever sell a product with UI (or documentation) translations machine made if I don't want to act and look like a perfect fool and the product to look like crap 
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Using AI to translate is like first year student in a new language. It may get some words right, but the context is always wrong. Different language treats subject/verbs differently like subject first or verb first have different meaning.
If the app is critical and to be sold for cash, always trust a human than an AI.
To mistake take a human, to really louse things up takes an AI.
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Maybe the Zeta resource editor will be of interest to you, it's a free tool to edit your resource files and you can let it use Google Translate or Microsoft Translator (Bing): Edit .NET string resources in parallel[^]
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Don't. While I can (better: could - I never actually encountered the situation) decipher what someone meant when I'm presented with the german output to an english sentence (e.g. in an email) I would never trust any application presenting the same gibberish. It would seem unprofessional and I'd most certainly figure that it will take from me what it can get (contact info, credit card details, phone number and everything else) and not use it.
At the state of the translation engines, it may be worth to do the intial translation using some automated tool, but proof reading done by a human saves your (and your app's) professional appearance, which you'll most likely want to have.
I only have a signature in order to let @DalekDave follow my posts.
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Sometimes it is even better to not translate. I despise the translated exceptions in the .NET Framework.
"De index ligt buiten de matrixgrenzen."
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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But sometimes you have to. Amazon, for instance, won't list things in "foreign" countries unless the app is available in that language.
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"Have to" is decided by management; it's a choice, nothing else.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Google translate works french to english.
However, be careful. I know of one company that in the English UI had "Enter you sex", and translated it, literally, to French.
"Entrez votre sexe."
Which means, "Put your dick in" 
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A friend told me the story of someone visiting a French friend's family.
When they asked him if he played a musical instrument, he was a flautist, he replied "Oui je, fait la pipe!".
The family were too polite to correct him at the meal.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Making sure the horse is well and truly masticated:
Automated translation is fine when you need to read an email or a document written in language not your own. You can't trust it to express your thoughts correctly when authoring a document or an application, especially if your text contains industry-specific vocabulary.
It's very difficult to get a good translation for an application. We have translators experienced with our products, and we try to send our localized apps to our in-country service people for review. Even with all that we get occasional complains about the quality of our translations. Many customers use the English version of the app by preference.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Try some of the videos in this playlist[^] to see how good Google Translate really is.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I was about to post the same...then decided to read this whole thread first. 
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Trilingual is even funnier.
I've noticed some really weird translations between Swedish and German, that simply didn't make sense.
That is, until I translated from German to English, and then to Swedish from English. Then I could see how it happened.
I've tested it several times since, it seems like Google translate is using English as an in between language.
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Try to translate Norwegian "postoppkrav" to Swedish - it comes out as "TORSK".
"Postoppkrav" first goes to English - correctly - as "Charge On Delivery", commonly abbreviated COD. Then COD is translated as if it were the fish "cod" to Swedish, but with casing preserved.
Earlier, Google could translate English numerals to French up to forty seven, but forty eight was translated to 48 That is fixed now, though.
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No, don't even try UI translation with any online translator. Ask the customer to provide the text. Having worked with websites in languages alien to me, I used to create UI in English so I understand and then translated it to required one. On the first demo people who knew the language were looking amused. I thought they are really happy with the UI. Turned out online translation meant something very different than what the text intended to convey. Luckily it was just first demo and I was waiting for translations from them.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Translate everything using Google Translate, then provide proofreading linguists with both copies: translated and English versions. Whenever the proofreaders get confused by Google's translation, they will be able to look up the original text and figure it out, even if they don't speak English very well themselves.
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I'm in the same situation. But I'm going to find someone who will do it for a free copy of the software.
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I would only use it as a means to check translation work from a third party.
The problem with translation is context - my father worked as a translator for 30 years and even back in the early 80's he was involved in machine translation trials which he pointed out were far worse than a human.
37 years later and we still don't have perfect machine translation.
One problem is that languages change over time and even within languages there are disputes over the correct use of the language.
Also within many languages there are different ways of phrasing the same sentence which convey a different level of education - init.
I find myself watching French films thinking "That's not particularly grammatically correct French they are speaking".
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
modified 4-May-18 2:58am.
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I suggest you don't. I have seen goggle translates firefighter into literally a man who gets into a fighting with fire, lol.
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Cue Metallica...
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I had this experience working with a Chinese client.
We used google translate but it ended up funny to them.
Luckily they have SAP consultant that knows English language and we gave him all the lists in English words from our application to be translated into Chinese then put it into our resource file.
It's a lot of work because every time there are changes in GUI labels or messages, it gets translated again and update the resource file.
[Signature space for sale]
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germanic languages should more or less easily translate to english and back.
When you go to other languages where the structure is different like Xhosa or Zulu it might not be just a straight forward word for word translate.
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