[mjn]

Because of Google's approach based strictly on statistical regularities, words can completely change translations based on context even in languages where that wouldn't normally happen, because the contexts can swing the estimates.

One funny one comes with city names, where Google sometimes mistakenly "translates" a city to a different city that happens to have frequent usage in the target language, in contexts that it must find analogous.

For example, here are some translations involving the Danish city Billund (location of Lego), which change even based on punctuation:

   Billund -> Billund
   Jeg er i Billund -> I am in Billund
   Jeg er i Billund. -> I'm in London.

For whatever reason, intriguing place-name translations are particularly common in the Danish->English case. Brøndby is often Red Sox, Odense is Kentucky, and Hillerød is sometimes Whatfield.

[mikeash]

My favorite one was the word "Amistad!" translated Spanish->English:

    Amistad! -> Friendship!

You could add more exclamation points, and they'd show up on the other side:

    Amistad!!! -> Friendship!!!

But when you reached five, you apparently hit some sort of context changeover, because:

    Amistad!!!!! -> Murder!

Sadly, it has since been fixed.

[dlhavema]

if someone kept on yelling "Friendship!" louder and louder, it might lead to murder...

[nknighthb]

Now I'm imagining an automated translation of a story from, say, the Star Trek universe to the Star Wars universe, substituting place and character names based on frequency of use in each universe.

[epochwolf]

Bad idea. Star Trek stories are horrid quality compared to Star Wars.[1] Do Star Wars to Star Trek. ;)

1: Based on my own experience. I've read at least 50% of the available Star Trek books and 75% of Star Wars. I've got maybe four Star Trek books I've liked and dozens of Star Wars ones.

[cema]

Maybe he was talking about the canon (the TV episodes) of Star Trek and the movies of Star Wars?

[mkehrt]

I believe you are looking for this: http://tattuinardoelasaga.wordpress.com/

[acc00]

You might like http://neil.fraser.name/software/diff_match_patch/svn/trunk/...

[justincormack]

No doubt would be confused by "peru is the Spanish for turkey" as well...

[rbonvall]

Nitpick: peru is the Portuguese for turkey. In Spanish it is "pavo".