What happened to Google Translate?

[Iversen]

As it may be known from my log I have been a heavy user of Google translate for one single purpose, namely to produce bilingual texts for weak target languages - but today I wanted to make some more texts and was flabbergasted to see a new version that simply doesn't function properly. The first translation you make seems to work as intended, but after that it doesn't matter what you do in the left window - and the new blue 'translate' button doesn't react to clicks. Am I the only one who see this, or does it work on other platforms like tablets or smartphones? So far the only solution I have found is to remove the message to the left completely with the X button (or to close and reopen the whole application for each new block of text). This is OK for my use of it, but I don't like to work in programs versions with such blatant errors - what else might be wrong?

The other machine translation systems I have seen have fewer languages or sometimes just one, or they rely on Google Translate, so it is a real problem if the new faulty version of GT isn't mended soon.

[Jaleel10]

[Slightly unrelated] One of the members in our online group was caught out like this.

She wanted to write apple pie, and google translate translated it as ''pie de manzanas''

This was another funny one from the r/Spanish subreddit




I mostly use DeepL translator nowadays but I actually thought Google Translate would have surpassed it by now, seems not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[rdearman]

It looks like you just change the text and it automatically translates. You no longer need to hit the button.

[Iversen]

It looks like you just change the text and it automatically translates. You no longer need to hit the button.

No, it doesn't. That was how it (mostly) functioned before, but now changes to the left (or pressing the blue arrow) have no effect on the text to the right..

GT failure.jpg

EDIT: my example above was made using Firefox, but I then got the idea to try an old Explorer version which I only keep for use with my local photo and music collection and NOT for surfing. Here the layout for some reason is different, whith the translation below the original text, and here I actually did see translation changes - but apparently Danish "makværk" isn't part of the library:

GT armensk partial failure.jpg

[Doitsujin]

You could try Microsoft Bing Translator for ad-hoc translations. It works like Google Translate used to work. The quality isn't as good as Google Translate, though.

For large texts you could also use Google Docs to translate text. (This method requires a [throwaway] Google account.)

There are also many browser extensions that you could use. If you let us know what browser(s) you use, I'm sure you'll get many add-on recommendations.

[drmweaver2]

FWIW, I use Chrome.
I just tried 5 sentences in Eng>Russian and Russian<Eng. Nothing's different from how it worked yesterday.

Obviously, YMMV

[tommus]

I use Chrome in Windows 7.

GT seems to be working the same as always. It translates as you type or edit.

[zenmonkey]

Just tried the new version on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
It seems to work, maybe you caught them through the transition.

[Iversen]

You could try Microsoft Bing Translator for ad-hoc translations. It works like Google Translate used to work. The quality isn't as good as Google Translate, though

... but it works, and that's the important thing. When I add or remove text I get the relevant translations. The only way I can get Google Translate in its current miserable state to react after the first input is by removing everything with X and insert the new input as one bloc - I can't add more content as I find it as I could as late as Monday. Unfortunately Bing hasn't got some of my target languages like Irish and Albanian so I can't just kick the new rotten version from Google out of the window ... and well, in principle Google might correct whatever error there is with the blue arrow when you use certain browsers, but I'll see it before I believe it.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I experienced some changes yesterday - as it happened, I was working with a text and wanted to tweak it to get the results I was looking for. All of sudden I couldn't change the text at all (as if it was grey/locked) - only go back in the browser window. This was right under the search field on Google. When I went to the Translate app, it all worked fine.