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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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Nope, google translate mixes up the context in which the word is written. That sometimes makes the translated sentences stray from the intended meaning. I would not depend on it.
I am not the one who knocks. I never knock.
In fact, I hate knocking.
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I am bilingual, and am also pretty comfortable with 2 additional languages. I can tell you that you absolutely need a human doing the translation for you.
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I have worked as a translator for ~15 years. I have translated UIs and have managed the translation of the UI in a large-scale product.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that you do not want to use Google to translate your UI if you want to appear even remotely professional. That is because - as has been pointed out - Google has no idea of context. Many words have a lot of different meanings. Just take the example of the word "right", which, depending on context, will have a lot of different translations.
There is no way that Google can decide on the right translation. It will simply choose one of the many options that are possible. So it's very possible that your users will see things like "Access Rights" as "Access legal entitlements" or something similar. As you can tell, that will only make your users question your sanity.
When we sent out the UI to be translated, we were always extremely wary of translation agencies who would send back 10s of thousands of strings without having a single question about context. That's when we knew they were poor and we switched to a new translation agency. It's a surprising truth that a lot of translation work is outsourced to Google translate, and then reviewed by a human (or in some cases not). These translations are by and large useless. In some cases we had to refuse payment because of lack of performance by the agency. We were perfectly capable of running the strings through Google ourselves; that's not what we were paying for.
This is a big issue because a UI will includes lots of single words (buttons, headers, menu options) that require translation, which means there is absolutely no context to go on if you look at just that one word. That's why you expect the translators to send you a long list of questions about those strings where multiple translations are possible depending on context. It's also why I documented many of the strings to clear up these questions a priori wherever possible.
You can test this yourself. Take a sentence, any sentence, and enter it into Google translate. Then translate it into a language of your choice and back into English. A lot of the time, it sort of makes sense, sometimes it makes perfect sense, sometimes it's gobbledygook. Some language pairs work better than others, some sentences work better than others.
Now enter the same sentence, and translate it from English to Spanish, then to French, then to Arabic, then to Chinese, and then back to English. You are guaranteed to get complete gibberish.
Next, do the same thing with a single word. You will very often not get the original English word when you do this. That's the red flag that tells you that Google is not translating context; it is looking through a list of possible translations, and choosing one "at random" (how else should it choose?).
I can give you millions of examples of this. Take "Anlage", which is German for, amongst others:
system, campus, areal, (email) attachment, (financial) investment, the act of adding a new record to a system and much more.
There is no way you can translate that correctly without being fluent in both German and English, and without asking questions the developers for context.
Google translate is OK for translating web pages in languages you cannot understand. You can get the general gist, and it's better than it used to be. It absolutely is not anywhere near professional standards and should not be used for anything that is "official".
Otherwise "Wagner's works" (i.e. compositions) become "Wagner's factories". "From" becomes "of". "on click" becomes "up click". And that's just one language pair.
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A few years ago I had been told we needed a Spanish translation for the large application that I had written in English. I started out manually copying every English word or phrase from the app and pasting it into Google Translate and then pasting the Spanish translation back into the app. Using the time measured for each translation cycle I determined that given the number of translations needed that it was going to take weeks to complete this task!
Then I wrote some code that searched the entire source code for text and wrote it into a file. Then I wrote another program that went through the list of text and automatically retrieved translations from Google Translate and added it as another column in the file (csv). Then my app used the translation list to get the translations during run time. It looked great to me but when I gave the app to a Spanish speaker to evaluate I was told that the Spanish translations were very bad and sometimes silly/funny. My translation file was subsequently given to a translator. They had to change only about 10% of the Spanish. It made things a lot faster for the translator to have 90% of the text being already OK.
Unfortunately, Google (and Yahoo too I think) did something to block me from using their translator in this automated way. Too bad, it was very useful.
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The problem I've come across is the structure of the languages with respect to variable substitution. You want to plunk somebody's name down in the middle of a sentence in English, but in some other language it's somewhere else.
That's the part where I think a human is still superior, if you can train the translator to produce the string with the variable embedded.
If you're o.k. with doing that yourself, I think Google Translate does a good first-cut job. In QA, your native (language X) speaker looks things over, suggests tweaks, at which point it should just be changing a resource file/database/however your strings are abstracted.
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I wanted to watch a movie on Netflix the other day that had the word "thirteen" in the middle of the title.
I didn't want to type the whole thing so I just typed "13".
I got back titles with "13" and "thirteen".
I also got titles with a "supernatural" (i.e. "unlucky 13") flavor.
I thought that was pretty good; though a person from another culture might not.
Same "context", different expectations?
It's fair to say that "context" needs to be properly "initialized".
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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For personal use, you may get the gist. For an end product no way. My husband teaches French/Spanish/German and can always tell when students use Google.
Toto1107
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I'm a little late, but I just stumbled over a MSDN page that auto-translated a class description over to german. Unfortunately, the technical descriptions - some of which were written in short term - turned up mangled and confusing. But, worst of all, the translation also included the method names! 
I don't know whether MSDN uses Google translate or it's own translation service, but I do not believe that a technical description can be easily translated automatically, unless it is very verbose. And, of course, you need to make sure that any symbols are excluded from translation...
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Why do spirits float? What ghost up, must come down…
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Add whipped cream to a cup. Fill cup with baileys.
Baileys will sink beneath the cream.
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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Well it is Baileys Irish Cream and in almost any hierarchy the Irish are at the bottom so it makes sense.
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yes the baileys will sink, but it still goes down too, but too much spirits and they may come up again.
...and to paraphrase Billy Connolly: 'along with carrots, there's always carrots, even if you didn't eat carrots, where the ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) do those ing carrots come from?'
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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Spooken like a true wiseman - although I haint[^] totally sure of that.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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That's indeed what I would exspectre, especially if they've been goblin up lots of bacon.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Boo. Posts like this are why you should be haunted to the ends of the earth.
Its so bad I would expect that you have to face the wraith of the Lounge moderator. If she is a ghoul I would exSpectre to bury you.
I'm pretty sure I would not like to live in a world in which I would never be offended.
I am absolutely certain I don't want to live in a world in which you would never be offended.
Freedom doesn't mean the absence of things you don't like.
Dave
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All this time I thought it was lack of grave-ity...
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Microsoft QC Operations[^]
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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That's not Microsoft QA: they don't listen to the feedback customers (or beta testers) give them...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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You may well be right.
My theory is that they listen to the QA reports, all have a good laugh, then go home early.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: My theory is that they listen to the QA reports, all have a good laugh, then go home early.
So for each report they read they get a day off...
Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.
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No. Use your minds eye and visualize.
They sit around a large table with a keg of bear beer (if it's before noon) and read the comments using funny voices. No matter how often it's done, they're amusement by this goes unabated.
After the keg (and their bladders) are emptied, they head home.
[edit]Fixed spelling error - was tempted to use bare[/edit]
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
modified 3-May-18 13:16pm.
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W∴ Balboos wrote: keg of bear
I must say that's an interesting one to visualize. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Ah so that explains Windows 8... 
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No, they don't, and it is entirely uncertain who they actually DO listen to.
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