[MandieD]

Just noticed that Google Maps translates a lot of German business names into English, which is exactly what I don't want when I’m driving along, looking for their sign. There’s enough “Denglish” (intentional use of English-like terms) in use by Germans themselves that this adds rather than removes confusion for non-native German speakers.

For example, “Stoffe Bauer” into “Fabric Farmer” - Bauer is a common family name, and Stoffe is the first thing on their sign.

[detaro]

lol, that's terrible. And a great example of lacking context.

Youtube also seems to randomly machine translate video titles into German for me, but weirdly enough only sometimes, for some videos. And has a similar problem that short labels etc just don't work if translated by something not optimized for it - and that a German channel probably would use English words in many cases...

[formerly_proven]

I don't understand the algorithm behind that at all. My YouTube is set to English; the UI is in English (but the "Edition" is still DE, because Geofencing). Most video titles are left alone, but some are translated - to German. Wat? Now you might think, it depends on the source language, English and German aren't translated, everything else is, but that's not the case. It's always just some, seemingly random, videos that get a translated title and description (I'm not sure if always both are translated, but I think not).

[polytely]

Same from English to Dutch, I wonder what triggers that, is it something the video owners has to enable? or does it only happen when there are good subtitles available (either community provided or auto-translated)

[wongarsu]

I've seen the same video appear with English title one day and with German title another day. I've also seen translated titles on Russian videos without any subtitles (I don't speak Russian, video was still interesting).

I suspect the suggestion/front page algorithm has a new branch, suggesting a small number of interesting-to-you foreign language videos with translated titles and adjusting from there.

[rjeli]

Love to use opaque tools that are designed to randomly change functionality and presentation. I think as far as divination goes, dowsing rods are far more reliable

[jacobush]

Same for random English to Swedish translations.

[piva00]

So that is what is happening sometimes on my YT... I live in Sweden but I'm not Swedish (can understand it but prefer English when possible), don't even have my Google account or YouTube set to Swedish so I have no idea it's translating them for me. Location-based perhaps but that would be a bit stupid.

[ecmascript]

Google does that for some products for us swedes as well which is very annoying since most of us are fluent in english. Even if it was in a language I don't speak I rather have it the native language because translating it often makes little sense and I can translate stuff myself when I need it, which isn't that often.

Often, the translation suck as well and doesn't make sense. Especially on youtube. I had to change my country of origin to make it disappear. Like, what's the point in translating a youtube video title if the video itself still is in english?

Or translating movie titles, which creates enormous confusion imo since it's not named a swedish name, it's often in english.

[Barrin92]

auto translate and location based results in general drive me up the wall. I always go to google.com/ncr because I really hate googling something in English and then getting a ton of German results that are super irrelevant.

On Bing this is somehow even worse, if you do a video search and you have the location setting wrong it just flatout doesn't show 90% of the reuslts for some queries.

[grawprog]

I'm in canada and on only one device under the same account I constantly get French ads on youtube. My language settings are all English across all my devices, it's the same youtube account, but for some reason, only on the ps4 youtube app, I get French ads. No idea why, i've scoured every setting possible, I don't live in a French speaking part of canada, i've never watched French videos, never given google any indication I can speak French(which I can't), have never turned on any French language settings on the ps4, all language settings across everything is English from what I can tell, I just have no idea.

[amelius]

That's probably because you Germans capitalize all your nouns ;)