With the spread of mobile devices and constant network connectivity, online machine translation has become quite ubiquitous for students and travelers alike. We know that, like the paper dictionaries they are replacing, these tools will be part of multilingual communication for many years to come. It is unclear, however, exactly what machine translation does well, and where it falls short.
In order to get a better idea of the capabilities of machine translation, we asked native speakers of 12 languages to come up with something that reflects the particular linguistic features of that language in the form of three question / answer pairs: one that is easy, one that is difficult, and one that is in between. Please note that the originals for each language are not translations of each other. We then run those texts through several online translation services including Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator, Baidu Fanyi, Naver Papago, Yandex.Translation, and Reverso Context, and copy / paste the results into a page. We did this once in early 2018, again in early 2019 and most recently, in April 2021 for the current version, in order to see what type of progress each tool has made.
This site is intended to be a reference for anyone interested in online translation, and a catalyst for conversation on the topic, but more than anything, we hope that it can also inform teachers' and learners' choices in the classroom.
Arabic to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
Chinese to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
English to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
French to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
German to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
Hebrew to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
Italian to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish / Audio to text
Japanese to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish / Audio to text
Korean to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
Portuguese to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
Russian to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text
Spanish to Arabic / Chinese / English / French / German / Hebrew / Italian / Japanese / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish | Audio to text