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by ben_w 119 days ago
Those are possible causes, but not an exhaustive list.

A few years back, I experienced Google Translate turning "I'm sorry, can you repeat that in English?" as "Excusez-moi, pouvez-vous répéter cela en français?", because translation was (I think) mapping typical sentences from the source language to the corresponding typical situation in the target language, and the typical situation in which a French speaker doesn't understand something they're going to ask for the repetition in French rather than in English. (This specific example has since been fixed).

So, what's the closest conceptual meaning in which an English speaker is using German loanwords to talk about a deep dark period of national history with a warmongering leader who keeps claiming to be peaceful, who openly talks about integrating a neighbour as part of a greater ethnic state, who wants to kick out undesirables, and has empowered thuggish behaviour of a paramilitary force that kidnaps people from the streets, and so on?

And then consider what Godwin's law does to the probability vectors.