Skip to main content

A fake truth by web: google translate glitch

I make some basic mathematics learning materials. I publish them on YouTube. This time I got a strange comment.

``Why the title of this video is ``basic division''? It is about subtraction.''

I made this video in Japanese, my video title was in Japanese (基本のひき算), but the comment was in English.

I was puzzled, ``ひき算'' means ``subtraction'' instead of ``division''. I found out that the person who wrote the comment used Google translate. When I input ``ひき算'' to the Google translate, it indeed translates it as ``Division''. Japanese has Kanji and Hiragana (and Katakana) for writing and Hiragana is a phonetic notation. My basic subtraction video is for first or second class students, thus I use Hiragana (phonetic notation). If I put the Kanji notation (引き算) to the Google translate, it is correctly translated to the subtraction. If I use all phonetic notation (ひきざん), then Google translate outputs ``Hikiman'', which I don't know the meaning.

Figure 1: Japanese ひき算 (subtraction) is mistranslated to
 ``Division'' by the Google translate at 2017-10-14.

But I had a problem, since Google translate was trusted. I am just a random native Japanese speaker. If I said, Google translate is wrong, who will believe me?

I showed ``ひき算 (subtranction)'' is a phonetic notation of Kanji ``引き算'', this is shown in the following link (online Japanese dictionary).

Figure 2: Japanese-Japanese online dictionary shows a phonetic notation ひき算 is equal too the Kanji notation 引き算.

I also show the following Japanese-English online dictionary result, which shows ``ひき算'' means subtraction.



It is hard to explain that the Google translate is wrong sometime.

This is maybe related with ``Reality-based community`` or Stephen Colbert's Truthiness. We don't know where the truth comes from. We just need always be careful. Fortunately this helps some extent. Also we need to learn every day.

This is nowadays not a new. But I would like to record this ``Fake truth by web'' experience. I also wonder, is it good that the Google translate one day learns ``ひき算'' means ``subtraction'', or this is a good warning about what you can trust is not so solid, so I would like to keep this mistake.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why parallelogram area is |ad-bc|?

Here is my question. The area of parallelogram is the difference of these two rectangles (red rectangle - blue rectangle). This is not intuitive for me. If you also think it is not so intuitive, you might interested in my slides. I try to explain this for hight school students. Slides:  A bit intuitive (for me) explanation of area of parallelogram  (to my site, external link) . 
Post a Comment
Read more

Geometric Multiplicity: eignvectors (2)

If eigenvectors of a matrix A are independent, it is a happy property. Because the matrix A can be diagonalized with a matrix S that column vectors are eigenvectors of A . For example, Why this is a happy property of A? Because I can find A's power easily. A^{10} is not a big deal. Because Λ is a diagonal matrix and power of a diagonal matrix is quite simple. A^{10} = SΛ^{10} S^{-1} Then, why if I want to compute power of A ? That is the same reason to find eigenvectors. Eigenvectors are a basis of a matrix. A matrix can be represented by a single scalar. I repeat this again. This is the happy point, a matrix becomes a scalar. What can be simpler than a scalar value. But, this is only possible when the matrix S's columns are independent. Because S^{-1} must be exist. Now I come back to my first question. Is the λ's multiplicity related with the number of eigenvectors? This time I found this has the name. Geometric multiplicity (GM): the number of in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gauss's quote for positive, negative, and imaginary number

Recently I watched the following great videos about imaginary numbers by Welch Labs. https://youtu.be/T647CGsuOVU?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703G3KJXapKkNaF I like this article about naming of math by Kalid Azad. https://betterexplained.com/articles/learning-tip-idea-name/ Both articles mentioned about Gauss, who suggested to use other names of positive, negative, and imaginary numbers. Gauss wrote these names are wrong and that is one of the reason people didn't get why negative times negative is positive, or, pure positive imaginary times pure positive imaginary is negative real number. I made a few videos about explaining why -1 * -1 = +1, too. Explanation: why -1 * -1 = +1 by pattern https://youtu.be/uD7JRdAzKP8 Explanation: why -1 * -1 = +1 by climbing a mountain https://youtu.be/uD7JRdAzKP8 But actually Gauss's insight is much powerful. The original is in the Gauß, Werke, Bd. 2, S. 178 . Hätte man +1, -1, √-1) nicht positiv, negative, imaginäre (oder gar um...
Post a Comment
Read more