According to a post from visualcapitalist.com, English language is still the top ranked language spoken all over the world (though a close 2nd is Mandarin Chinese). Language is being used for communication, and it should be noted that a universal language should be somehow learned in one way or  another. Because you may never know when will it come in handy during your travels.

But let’s have some little fun about language shall we? Google Translate is a handy tool to easily translate phrases and even sentences to almost any language you want. But how reliable is it? Let’s have a quick test.

First test: old English translation

Let’s try the word “You shall not pass” and translate to a little more complicated Welsh language:

Simple and pretty straightforward, just don’t ask us how to pronounce that. Now let’s try to switch them up and check if the same words / translations come up:

Notice that the word “shall” was changed to “cannot”. It may be a little bit no bearing in this case but it would probably be on more complicated phrases. Now let’s try to switch them back to original English-to-Welsh translation without changing any words:

It seems that the wordings were permanently changed in this case. Something fishy? Well let’s try another language, from another complex and lower-ranked language (in terms of universal use) Filipino:

Again, same as the Welsh translation, it is still pretty straightforward. Now let’s move on with the switch and check it out if some words gets replaced:

Notice that the word “shall” was changed to “will”. On the Welsh translation, it was a different one so, again, it is fishy. Now let’s switch back to the original translation set-up without changing any word:

Again, same with the Welsh translation, the original phrase was permanently changed.

Welsh and Filipino language may not be too popular in terms of worldwide usage, so maybe the translation tool could induce a slight mishap, so let’s use a little bit more popular one such as Spanish. Let’s check it out:

Again, the first translation doesn’t look fishy, let’s move on to the first swap:

Oops, even a popular language has a slight glitch on the change of the word! Now let’s confirm further on the switch back:

Uh-oh! It seems the tool indeed has some slight glitch in translation.

Second test: Modern English translation

But wait, we used a little bit old English phrase (more Shakespearean or LOTR-like language). So in fairness, let’s try out a modern English type of a phrase such as “You are not allowed to enter”. Let’s use the same languages for direct comparison:

Welsh translation

1st swap:

2nd swap:

Unlike the first phrase, there were no word changes and the translations are all consistent. Let’s check out the other languages:

Filipino translation:

1st swap

2nd swap:

Again, same as the Welsh translation, all words were never changed up until from the original translation set-up. So let’s move on to the last language translation.

Spanish Translation:

1st swap:

2nd swap:

True indeed, the 3rd language translation showed consistent wordings, unlike the old English translation.

Summary

Google Translate is a very useful tool, just use the modern language one.

Hope you had fun and enjoyed this little game. Subscribe to us for more Stories, Facts and Everything in Between.