Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
If it's good, it's because they have a translated copy.
I've been using online translation for 20+ years.
Google started with copies of EU documents. The same thing in different languages. It's brute force pattern comparison of phrases to known translations.
"a Ben Aaronovich novella that was released in German before it was released in English"
But how much of it wasn't phrases already known to Google?
If you found it good enough you were lucky.
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Oddly enough, we've been using online translation for about the same amount of time--my first experience was using it to translate the grandfathering rules for the EU restrictions on the Landesbanks around 2000.
At that time, the translations were terrible.
Over the years, I've used online translations for my non-fiction texts frequently--usually relating to legal matters.
They became very usuable over time and eventually, the translations quite solid.
I mostly used the translations to prep for conversations with non-US lawyers who spoke English, as a way to know what to ask about. I was pleasantly surprised in recent years that the machine-translated text was accurate enough to hide my ignorance of the matters being discussed.
Whether this is a result of "copying know phrases" or not--it worked.
Of course, your use-case and you need may differ.