Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet?
by uranusjr on Thursday August 10, 2023 @05:16AM
(#37073795)
自行車 is used since way before mainland China influence is significant, although 腳踏車 has always been indeed more colloquial. Rejecting 自行車 is like rejecting winter squash as American English only because you grow up calling it pumpkin. As parent said, author really seems to have shockingly little experience with non-colloquial Taiwanese Chinese to confidently publishing such a page.
Is having "lived in Taipei for almost three years," really enough to confidently claim that "this is not a big deal at all?" Especially if you "use Google Translate every day of [your] life," presumably not because you're proficient in the local language?
As a matter of fact, a special "Cross-Strait" dictionary was developed to deal with all the language differences, with nearly 6,000 words and 30,000 phrases: https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=10&post=19596
It hardly seems like "no big deal" to those who should know best.
Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet?
by throwaway6e8f on Thursday August 10, 2023 @07:11AM
(#37074585)
I mean it’s on a par with using simplified Chinese here. People understand what you mean, but you get disapproving looks. A foreigner using G translate would probably be fine, though :)
I also grew up in Canada, have British parents, and lived in the USA for seven years, so I'm used to switching from "Traditional English" to "Simplified English" too ;-)
I mean, ya, sometimes Google Translate uses Mainland China words (e.g., I just typed Bicycle and it returned 自行車 instead of 腳踏車). But I just tried typing 土豆片 (potato chips) and translating it to "English" and it returned "potato chips" instead of the British "crisps" too. This is not a big deal at all.