Web page translation

As I research new cuisines, I often surf onto websites written in languages I don't know. My browser has started asking me if it can translate those sites into English for me. The result is surprisingly readable. No, it's not perfect, but it's much better than I thought artificial intelligence translation could be.

So when I discovered a possible diet connection to Zika-caused microcephaly, I decided to try using Google Translate to put that hypothesis out there in Spanish and Portugese for the benefit of people in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and Brazil. I know Spanish fairly well, so I fixed the few little errors from the Google-translated Spanish version myself. Because Portugese is similar to Spanish, I fixed those same few little errors in the Google-translated Portugese version and ran it by a relative who was an LDS missionary in Brazil in case I missed anything else (he said it looked fine). Are my translations perfect? I highly doubt it. But they're good enough to do the job of passing on information.

Amateur translation has gotten much cheaper and doable. Of course, I was also dealing with languages that are not especially hard to learn. I've been learning a little Arabic recently, and Google Translate isn't especially good at translating between Arabic and English. Yet.

For those relying on computer translation for important things like business negotiations and affairs of the heart, I will just post this video as a cautionary example of how it can go wrong: