BOSTON, Mass. (A.W.)—Google’s online translation service (translate.google.com) is translating “Ես սիրում եմ հայերին” (I love Armenians) to “I love Turkey.”
The mistranslation was pointed out to us by Lebanese Armenian activist Serouj Baghdassarian. The Armenian Weekly has verified it.
UPDATE: The translation issue was resolved by late afternoon on Feb. 19, following an active online campaign by activists who read this report.
This shouldn’t be left out like this … we should be protesting agains things like this ! we should follow this up and fight for this
What is so wrong with love?
Google allows you to rate the translate in the lower right corner of the translation box. If you click on the checkbox you’ll have the following three options:
Helpful
Not Helpful
Offensive
I clicked on Offensive given that this is caused by anti-armenian actions.
You’re really the right person to teach us what love is. Thanks for all your past efforts Murat.
We have to play this off as being funny. If we react too strongly to this, the world will think we are “unconstructive”. That said, whomever programmed this should be fired, just because of incompetence/malice.
Yes, but Google should be informed because this is clearly a breach of their translation site.
I have been warning the Armenian community and Armenia for almost 10 years about the systematic nature of the anti-armenian grand plan that Microsoft, Apple and Google are deploying against the Armenian people.
No one was listening so far, and thus, there we go again…
I just tried to send an email to Google to complain about this problem on the google translator site and was unable to navigate my way through all the ‘contact us’ links to submit a simple message. Can anyone help me?
“systematic nature of the anti-armenian grand plan that Microsoft, Apple and Google are deploying”
Maybe it’s because you’re blowing it out of proportion into a conspiracy theory. I think it more likely that these corporations don’t give a hoot about a small group of people rather than they’re out to deliberately denigrate us.
Mr. Mherian, please see my comment below giving the reason for this error. But I’m very curious, have you written any papers or articles about your accusation against these companies? Is it published, or do you have a website I’m very interested to read them.
if you translate “yes sirum em hayer” instead of “hayerin” then it’s correct. Also if you translate “hayerin” then it’s also correct.
I went thru and rated it as “not helpful” for every language. I don’t know if it will help, but we should get this corrected.
Here is how you can attack or counterattack this issue. Google translator derives its text correlation from the multilingual textual corpus that exists on the Internet. This implies the following loophole, for which Google have been warned by many computer scientist: Any large group of people can fool and hack the translator’s credibility by simply posting large amounts of well devised multilingual text on the Internet with wrong translations.
In a more layman’s terms, this implies that on the entire global Internet textual material or corpus, currently there exists absolutely no text with correct English translation of precisely the following statement: “Ես սիրում եմ հայերին”, thanks to our indifferent Armenian population who don’t care about the Armenian language and refuse to write and communicate in Armenian (e.g. on Facebook, etc.)
Meanwhile, some computer literate anti-Armenian group (obviously Turks) discovering this gap, did their dirty job and went to the extreme of writing Armenian text with multilingual wrong translation on the Internet fooling the vulnerable Google Translator algorithms to translate this text as “I love Turkey”.
This means that if such an anti-Armenian is well organized, they should have fooled and hacked many more phrases than what we have just discovered.
To counter this, the best and systematic way is to put a lot of Armenian text on the Internet with their corresponding multilingual correct translations. For example, write a PDF document with “Ես սիրում եմ հայերին” text in it, and side by side with the correct translation in English and as many languages as possible. Then publish it on some publicly visible website that allows Google crawlers to visit (by default all web pages do).
I have given you the technical facts, but of course it’s beyond doubt that there is also Google’s Pro-Turkish campaign, which is indeed a fact. For example find Artzakh’s boundaries on Google Map. Where is it? Is this true geography or political b.s.
This Pro-Turkish campaign is not only Google’s trade, Apple and Microsoft corporations are also following such.
That IT expert doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This isn’t Google’s fault or some grand conspiracy. When their translation service was being developed, they encouraged people to contribute with translations. Think of Wikipedia. Obviously some Turkish person contributed that as some sick joke.
This is interesting because just yesterday I was looking up something using Google translate, and by chance came upon to a translation from English to Persian that was obviously tampered with… “Soviet dissidents” translates to می آید که قربانیان آن بیشتراز مخالفین نظام جمهوری اسلامی اتحاد جماهیر شوروی in Persian. For those who don’t read Persian, the word “dissidents” is translated to a whole sentence as follows: “the victims were mostly from those who oppose the Islamic Republic”! So my guess is that the Google translation service like Wikipedia, and other such “open” services rely heavily on user contributions, and it’s a shame that some unscrupulous individuals make it difficult to create a reliable resource…
Here is how you can attack or counterattack this issue. Google translator derives its text correlation from the multilingual textual corpus that exists on the Internet. This implies the following loophole, for which Google have been warned by many computer scientist: Any large group of people can fool and hack the translator’s credibility by simply posting large amounts of well devised multilingual text on the Internet with wrong translations.
In a more layman’s terms, this implies that on the entire global Internet textual material or corpus, currently there exists absolutely no text with correct English translation of precisely the following statement: “Ես սիրում եմ հայերին”, thanks to our indifferent Armenian population who don’t care about the Armenian language and refuse to write and communicate in Armenian (e.g. on Facebook, etc.)
(Continued)
Meanwhile, some computer literate anti-Armenian group (obviously Turks) discovering this gap, did their dirty job and went to the extreme of writing Armenian text with multilingual wrong translation on the Internet fooling the vulnerable Google Translator algorithms to translate this text as “I love Turkey”.
This means that if such an anti-Armenian is well organized, they should have fooled and hacked many more phrases than what we have just discovered.
To counter this, the best and systematic way is to put a lot of Armenian text on the Internet with their corresponding multilingual correct translations. For example, write a PDF document with “Ես սիրում եմ հայերին” text in it, and side by side with the correct translation in English and as many languages as possible. Then publish it on some publicly visible website that allows Google crawlers to visit (by default all web pages do).
I have given you the technical facts, but of course it’s beyond doubt that there is also Google’s Pro-Turkish campaign, which is indeed a fact. For example find Artzakh’s boundaries on Google Map. Where is it? Is this true geography or political b.s.
This Pro-Turkish campaign is not only Google’s trade, Apple and Microsoft corporations are also following such.
You’re seeing conspiracy here Haro. Artsakh’s boundaries are not on google maps because they have not been internationally recognized. I’m assuming that google and others simply go by what are the internationally recognized boundries of countries.
“Any large group of people can fool and hack the translator’s credibility by simply posting large amounts of well devised multilingual text on the Internet with wrong translations.”
Do you have any examples of thse?
Ես սիրում եմ հայերին translates to “I love Turkey” not only in English, but in French, Spanish, German, Russian, Portugese, Persian… all “Google translate” languages!
Tak,
According to the wikipedia page on google translate:
“Google does not translate from one language to another (L1 → L2), it most often translates first to English and then to the target language (L1 → EN → L2).”
So I think the translations are defined in English and then translated from English to the target language. So it makes sense that a whole bunch of others will say “Turkey”, because the translation happens from English (Armenian -> English -> French/Spanish/German etc…)
If you do the translation, and then click on the word “Turkey”, then you’ll see a list of choices:
the Armenians
Armenia
Armenians
and a text input field with the word Turkey in it. Anyone can add a translation. It appears google know of several translation in this sentence and Turkey appears to be preferred. I’m guessing a bunch of Turks added “Turkey” to the input field. And with enough people, google translate switched to using “Turkey” instead of “Armenians”. I’m guessing here.
I’m going to click on “Armenians” from the list.
It’s fixed!!
Confirmed. It now says “I like the Armenians”
Do these Turks have nothing else better to do? They’ve devoted all their time and energy to vandalize an Armenian translation? And in all languages? This is like the time they vandalized the Armenian version of Facebook a couple years ago.
This shows how childish they are. They act like a bunch of 3rd graders.
For real. I have to laugh every time on hurriyet or zaman I see dopes saying how ‘little’ a problem Armenians pose to the turkish giant. Boy, they sure act like we give them a lot of heat for such a tiny problem we are supposed to be. We have a tiny isolated country and there are just a few million of us around the globe, but we still freak them out. Are they that insecure?
This is an extreme overreaction. Anyone can add alternate translation in Google. It was some childish act by some idiot. No need for an uproar.
Bottom line is that no one but us can stand guard to our language. If we choose to ignore the use of Armenian language on the web, then we should expect more issues like this.
Haro,
“Meanwhile, some computer literate anti-Armenian group (obviously Turks) discovering this gap, did their dirty job and went to the extreme of writing Armenian text with multilingual wrong translation on the Internet fooling the vulnerable Google Translator algorithms to translate this text as “I love Turkey”.”
I could not find any examples of these. Do you know of any?
I don’t see these things as deliberate acts by Google, Microsoft or Apple, but part of ongoing internet vandalism by Turkish hackers, and in many case such as this one it’s pure Turkish childish joke.
Few years ago, Turks hacked Google map of Mt. Ararat and put Mt. Agri on that. The writing was removed after Armenian complaints.
Wow! Reading all these comments and all assumptions.
You guys are hilarious! I guess its the same story as always the blame game, turks did this, turks did that…… very misinformed people here…..
Hate is very strong…..
& this hate will continue and turn into something else if you dont stop it. Geos for both sides.
Can’t you guys see this is a ”humanitarian” and ”peaceful” approach to relations between two peoples?
Why does it bother you so much?
What an unacceptable mistake, lets blame them with genoicide too.
The things are not so simple in the linguistics, as in the politics. Back translation from the Arab: “I would like the Armenians”. The LOVE is lost!!!
Murat, Mehmet and Ali,
Aha, so it was you guys! :)
Well there is the basic linguistic issue of it not being a correct translation.
Imagine the uproar if the the opposite happened with the phrase “I love Turks” translating to “I love Armenians”. I’m sure charges of denigrating Turkishness would be thrown around.
who said i was 1 side in this….
I am a mixed race….no one is 100%. I have Turkish ,Kurdish, Arab & Asian blood in me
But i have never fought against anyone of the above races, in reality i have more friends from the above nations than anything.
To make the point that this is not one side either from a tuirkish point of veiw or amenian, This is a google issue, my amenian friends here all laughed and said it must of been an amerian who hacked in just to stir the pot hahahha or a turk. The point is i think ppl need to relax :)
Lets all have a drink!
@Random Armenian: I’m sure there would be the random charges of insulting turkishness and denigrating turkishness charges if this came up here. But its us the people who have to stand up against such things. You folks have failed to set an example of it here. Let noone say: ”I am the saint, you are the devil.”
None of us is a saint.
Mehmet,
Or assume the loudest speak for the rest us, or you.
if the shoe were on the other foot I am 100% certain Erdogan would be trying to prohibit the use of Google in Turkey.
@Joseph I bloody hate the guy, but its actually not him trying to ban websites like youtube and wikileaks and stuff. Its actually the brain-impaired district atterneys and judges that have no idea how the internet works. Or are just too back minded to put it all together.
However, Erdogan did introduce his very own ”internet” cencorship program which I think will be ‘enforced’ to all internet users soon. So who knows…
Yeah, Erdogan is a very sensitive person. Especially when compared with Gul, who is more reserved. I have a hard time trying to figure out how much of Erdogan’s public display of emotion is his true nature or playing it up for the public. Probably both.
Here’s the ECHR telling Erdogan to grow up.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-pm-should-be-more-tolerant-says-european-court-of-human-rights-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=14268&NewsCatID=339
If google is not biased against Armenians, then how come there is no single doodle about famous Armenians like Andre Agassi, William Saroyan, Arshile Gorky, Aram Khachaturian, Ivan Ayvazovsky, Raymond Damadian? They even made a logo about Lebanon’s independence day and there is nothing on Armenia’s independence day. This is a serious problem. When you tell people about Armenians the only thing they say is genocide and kim kardashian. This is because our leaders only focus on the genocide and don’t care about public relations.