Google Translate bug mixes up Heath Ledger, Tom Cruise

UPDATE: Google representatives informed CNET News.com on Thursday that this "internal issue with Google Translate" has been fixed.

Gawker has unearthed a rather odd bug in the Google Translate software: its English-to-Spanish translator converts the name of the actor Heath Ledger, who died tragically on Tuesday, to the name of another actor--Tom Cruise. So if you enter in "I will miss Heath Ledger," Google Translate will come back with "Voy a perder Tom Cruise."

This looks like a simple bug in the system, perhaps the work of a bored Googler somewhere in the world. It only affects the English-to-Spanish translation; translations from English into other languages leave "Heath Ledger" intact, and "Tom Cruise" remains "Tom Cruise" in a Spanish-to-English translation. And the bug only appears to apply to the name "Heath Ledger," as substituting a number of other actors' names (Owen Wilson, John Travolta, Russell Crowe, Jake Gyllenhaal) also fails to yield "Tom Cruise."

It'd all be pretty funny were it not for the terrible circumstances surrounding Ledger, 28, who was found dead after an apparent overdose of sleeping pills; there's nothing tasteless about it, thankfully, but cracking jokes or hinting at Scientology conspiracies just doesn't seem all that fitting. We've contacted Google for comment. But we're guessing that this won't be a very pressing issue for Mountain View.

[cchenoweth6]

Someone found a bug...

Who knew that Google Translate had bugs?? ;)

[rhsc]

the trick is in the timing

had ledger not just died, this story probably would have made a 4chan thread or a topic on the somethingawful boards, but probably no further than that

[billmosby]

Reminds me of Word spell-checker results

I used to use Word for a lot of things at work. It insisted that my
supervisor's name was "ammeter" instead of "Aumeier", and that
the name of a co-worker was "cowgirl" rather than "Cowgill". I
don't remember who it thought Bill Gates or Steve Jobs were.

[Dr_Zinj]

It should be obvious

It would probably return "God the Almighty" for Bill Gates; and either "Allah" or "Zeus" for Steve Jobs.

[jgaskell]

That's the most incredible story I have ever heard!

A spell checker doesn't recognise names and substitutes other words instead? Who would have thought that would happen?

[alegr]

Prank

That's not a bug. Somebody might have entered "community-provided better translation" for the name. This is just a prank.

[soggy0]

Another

It seems to have been fixed. Try "Voy a comer Tom Cruise." instead.

[JBSimmons]

Goggle SEO produces SPAM

I created 2 Google alerts on:
Michael Martin Murphey concerts
Michael Martin Murphey festivals

Google returns XXX rated spam connected with a "gold colored 'My Lexus' car" daily. When will they fix their SEO (search engine optimization) & SEM (search engine marketing) spam? This is truly FUBAR. I have to delete their spam every single day. A national celebrity/recording artist seems to be consistently connected to XXX spam and the car for the last 4 MONTHS.

[JBSimmons]

Correction: Goggle > Google

Sorry for a typo, with CTS, you never know what's going to happen when. I rely HEAVILY on a spell checker too to catch these misfires...

[dianarbiser]

Google Translate is another useless machine

The problem is not the mix-up of the names of the actors, but rather the translation of "miss" for "perder," which doesn't make sense in this context. Good that we still have people translating, instead of machines! :)

[vintermann]

That is what happens with statistical translation. Instead of tired old errors like ungrammatical sentences, Google Translate comes up with entirely new ways of messing up.

No, I don't think this is a prank, either from a Google employee or from a user-suggested translations (if those are used at all, something I've never seen any indication of yet, I'm sure they're washed.) These things just happen. Glitch in the corpus.

Another example: "Jeg snakker norsk" becomes "I speak English". However, "Norsk fotball er kjedelig" still becomes "Norwegian football is boring" :-P