That round-trip translation the article starts with is way way better than anything I've ever obtained from Google Translate.
Let's use it to translate what I just wrote, into Spanish:
"Ese viaje de ida y vuelta el artículo comienza con es mucho mejor que cualquier cosa que he obtenido de Google Translate."
That's readable but the "el articulo comienza con" is bush league — a clear sign Google is translating word for word. No one would ever mistake this translation for real Spanish.
If we translate back to English, the result is better than the Spanish!
"That trip back and forth the article starts with is much better than anything I've gotten from Google Translate."
So, amusingly, a weakness on one-way translation — the word-for-word method — becomes a strength on round trip translations. (Not that round trip translations are going to be useful to anyone.)
I did Spanish so that a lot of people here would understand. But now let's do Hebrew. I get
תרגום הלוך ושוב כי המאמר מתחיל עם הדרך דרך טוב יותר מכל דבר שאי פעם שיתקבל מ- Google Translate.
That's beyond merely bad, it's pretty unintelligible as Hebrew. (In fact the only way a Hebrew speaker would make any sense of it is if he knew English and tried translating word for word back to English.)
And indeed, once again the round trip translation is better, though the original meaning is pretty much lost:
"Translating back and forth that article begins with a way better way than anything I've ever received from Google Translate."
Let's use it to translate what I just wrote, into Spanish:
"Ese viaje de ida y vuelta el artículo comienza con es mucho mejor que cualquier cosa que he obtenido de Google Translate."
That's readable but the "el articulo comienza con" is bush league — a clear sign Google is translating word for word. No one would ever mistake this translation for real Spanish.
If we translate back to English, the result is better than the Spanish!
"That trip back and forth the article starts with is much better than anything I've gotten from Google Translate."
So, amusingly, a weakness on one-way translation — the word-for-word method — becomes a strength on round trip translations. (Not that round trip translations are going to be useful to anyone.)
I did Spanish so that a lot of people here would understand. But now let's do Hebrew. I get
תרגום הלוך ושוב כי המאמר מתחיל עם הדרך דרך טוב יותר מכל דבר שאי פעם שיתקבל מ- Google Translate.
That's beyond merely bad, it's pretty unintelligible as Hebrew. (In fact the only way a Hebrew speaker would make any sense of it is if he knew English and tried translating word for word back to English.)
And indeed, once again the round trip translation is better, though the original meaning is pretty much lost:
"Translating back and forth that article begins with a way better way than anything I've ever received from Google Translate."