I've seen other examples of obviously wrong translations a machine wouldn't come up with -- there must be a feedback mechanism somewhere that people (non-employees) can provide a translation, and some people abusing it.
Yes in the Stanford AI class they talked about the feedback mechanisms, and it is mixed with the automatic translations that come from comparative analysis of documents on the web that are already translated.
I thought this was widely known but when you hover over translated text, whether this is on the Google Translate page, or at a translated site, you get the option to correct the translated text if you want.
I don't know if this has always been the case, but I'm pretty sure it's been around for a few years.
In case one is unaware, google's translation service is built upon 'high grade' translations - originally from UN translation logs. So, if you actually get a few hundred sites to provide incorrect translations for a specific phrase, you could theoretically game google translate in this manner.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 20.7 ms ] threadhttp://translate.google.com/#en|de|google%20is%20stupid%0A
I don't know if this has always been the case, but I'm pretty sure it's been around for a few years.
http://translate.google.com/#es|en|google%20es%20estupido
http://translate.google.com/#es|en|google%20es%20un%20estupi...
(the former translates to correct english, the latter is correct spanish)
Funny: "ist doof" translates to english as "sucks", not "is stupid".
http://translate.google.com/#de%7Cen%7Cgoogle%20ist%20wirkli...