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Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet? by SeanLuke on Thursday August 10, 2023 @04:36AM (#37073544)
Chinese generally has two writing systems: traditional and simplified. In the 1950s to 1980s mainland China developed simplified chinese in a bid to make the language easier to write. Note that these are just different ways of writing the same characters: think cursive versus block. They are not different languages -- the vocabulary and grammar can be identical.

Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and to one degree or another various Chinese communities around the world. Taiwan is obviously the 800 pound gorilla here.

Taiwan has come to develop its own style of written Chinese -- think US vs British English but more nationalistic. So the question is: when Google Translate converts to traditional characters should it also be translating into Taiwan's written patois [not to be confused with the Taiwanese dialect]? After all, Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British). And there are other groups which use traditional without this patois (Hong Kong, say, though likely not for long), albeit in fewer numbers.

The author does have one good point, and that is that Google Translate is mistakenly describing traditional as zh-TW, that is "traditional as used in Taiwan". As long as it insists on doing that, it should be translating into Taiwan's written patois. But what it should be doing instead is describing traditional as zh-Hant.

Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet? by quenix on Thursday August 10, 2023 @05:22AM (#37073826)
> After all, Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British).

I'm a bit confused—can you think of some examples where GT would default to British English translations over American English?

Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet? by SeanLuke on Thursday August 10, 2023 @08:10AM (#37075165)
It varies.

Italian("Uso l'acensore") -> "I use the lift"

Italian("Provo l'acensore") -> I try the elevator"

Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet? by globular-toast on Thursday August 10, 2023 @05:31AM (#37073893)
> Google Translate does not differentiate between Britain and the US in English (it sadly uses British).

Wrong way around? I just checked and it seems to use American (sadly).

Re:Has Google Translate been fixed yet? by throwaway290 on Thursday August 10, 2023 @12:13PM (#37078060)
Your first mistake is assuming Chinese is a language, it's a writing system (now two writing systems) used by separate languages.