Google Translator: Russia and Mordor

Good morning!

Yesterday I read an article about a “fantastic” mistake of Google Translator. Apparently in the translation from Ukranian into Russian, the sentence “Russian Federation” was translated like “Mordor”, the fictitious land of The Lord of The Rings ruled by the evil Sauron.

Logically, Russia doesn't mean Mordor, but it was a translation mistake, because Google Translator works with statistics and it chose wrong with the analysis of all documents that it uses. Google Translator doesn't apply gramatical rules and that's why it makes this kind of mistakes.

The reflection about this topic is not to use directly a translation from an automatic traslator. You have to check it always or, if the text has a languages that you don't control, ask for help. A translator or proofreader will help you. This mistake about Mordor is very showy, but it is possible that the translator will make some unnoticed mistakes and your text won't have the quality that it requires.

Here you have the article in Spanish.