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by ephesus 5745 days ago
The funniest part is that Nate's response is almost equally bad Japanese.
3 comments

Oh, nowhere near as bad, it's readily comprehensible. I think it's machine translated itself though, I was able to get the same phrases out by typing in what I thought the English originals were likely to be (e.g. "私はあなたを助けるつもりです" comes from "I am going to help you").

While doing this I was disappointed to see that Google Translate makes one of the biggest English->Japanese beginner mistakes - overuse of anata ('you'), which you hardly ever use in Japanese.

It might be bad Japanese (my own Japanese wasn't ever good, and it's been years since I've studied it at all, so I can't evaluate), but it is at least comprehensible.
Could you offer a translation? I'm curious how it relates, going the other direction.
According to Google Translate <drum roll>:

Mr. Matsumoto, Hi. This is Nate.

Google translator, the incompetence which is vulgar. (Laughs) Make sure to email me directly. You can write in Japanese. I will help you.

Sadly, no goats.

Far from "nearly equally" as bad, at least Nate's text is easily interpreted in the intended way. His grammer may be very stiff and incorrect, but for a non-native speaker who probably doesn't live in Japan, give him some slack.

That said, I did enjoy his construction 「あなたは日本語で書くことができます。私はあなたを助けるつもりです。」Trying to preserve the jerky tone: "You are able to write japanese! It is my intention to rescue YOU."

Wow. Google actually did a pretty good job with that one. Although I have to admit, the sentences are short and unnaturally terse, so google would have an easy time with it.

It actually sounds better in the Google-translated english than his Japanese. :/

I do like that he wrote his name two different ways in the same message. (Ne-to vs Neito)