
Google translated Russia to 'Mordor' in 'automated' error - dan1234
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35251478
======
tetromino_
Explanation for those unfamiliar with Russophone online culture: in the
Russian-speaking internet, Russia's gopniks (approximate equivalent of
England's chavs) have for a long time been occasionally referred to as orcs or
goblins. In the context of the Russian/Ukrainian conflict, this has expanded
to anti-Putinist opposition and pro-Ukrainian trolls labeling pro-Putin
Russians as orcs, and Russia itself as Mordor, land of the orcs. (Examples of
usage: [http://spektr.press/chto-eto-s-nimi/](http://spektr.press/chto-eto-s-
nimi/)
[http://grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.235880.html](http://grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.235880.html))

This also ties into an old Russian geek tradition of identifying fantasy-genre
elves with America and the West (which is very obvious in some fictional
universes; e.g. in Tolkien's works, Valinor geographically corresponds to
North America), with the natural implication that orcs and goblins (the
opponents of the elves) are Russians, and therefore basically good guys but
tragically misunderstood by the world. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer)
for this viewpoint expanded into a novel.

So either google's algorithms had identified a sufficient number of humorous
references to Russia as Mordor, or some intrepid band of trolls decided to
google-bomb the algorithm to push this translation.

~~~
avodonosov
As a person native to russophone online culture: this "explanation" is your
fantasy.

It's true ukrainian coments in forums can call russia mordor, but it's not an
extension of any previous background. And IMHO it doesn't require explanation.
BTW, I have never heard about america = valinor.

~~~
free652
I never heard a Ukrainian call Russia Mordor, nor either russian or ukrainian
call USA valinor.

Hell, most of the Russian speakers wouldn't probably know what Valinor means
in the first place.

Yea, some people call it. But they are so marginal. I agree with you, this is
a specific attack against google's algorithm.

~~~
wodenokoto
We are not talking about most Russian speakers, but an Internet subculture of
Russian speakers.

------
Mahn
I wonder if these "algorithmic errors" are the result of people "maliciously"
training Google Translate, since there's the option to correct and give a
better translation. I wouldn't be surprised if it were programmed to
automatically assume that a correction is good if multiple people correct the
same thing, which would then lead to these gaffes as communities like 4chan
figured it out and "exploited" it.

~~~
dwc
I study Norwegian, and I've seen some odd things like that in Google
Translate. For instance, one time I translated a sentence containing a
prominent Norwegian university that got translated to Princeton in English.
I'm inclined to think that this wasn't malicious or a joke, but simply a
deficiency in the automation. I've read a little bit about how Google
Translate's automated stuff works, but not enough to feel confident to suggest
how or why these kinds of errors happen.

~~~
_benedict
I would throw a wild guess that it tries to replace phrases with ones of
equivalent meaning, so that the gist of a sentence is translated.

Things like "raining cats and dogs" doesn't probably translate well literally,
for instance. It probably failed to categorise these universities as things
that should not be translated in this manner.

~~~
Symbiote
I've seen this with measurements and currency.

Danish "... 15 meters ... 100kr" becomes "... 15 feet ... $100" which isn't
helpful. (45 feet would not be helpful either.)

------
willvarfar
Tangentially reminds me of the recent Ludum Dare "best innovation" winning
game entry that uses Google auto-correction (not translation):

 _Infinity Monkey Autocorrect_

"This funk-filled game explores what would happen to the Infinity
Monkey/Typewriter Theorem if it had a commercially-biased autocorrect. The
game submits to a growing body of monkey-submitted literature."

[http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-34/?action=preview&uid...](http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-34/?action=preview&uid=45696)

View the growing body of literature submitted through the game by monkeys
(players):
[http://ld34.idumpling.com/manuscripts.txt](http://ld34.idumpling.com/manuscripts.txt)

Extract:

"the difference, quickbooks online baby eats frog laid. the university
favoured.. Dkdkbi ignored.. B bet but, the quotes"

Fantastic :)

~~~
dasboth
This is superb! I've often wondered how autocorrect would finish some of my
messages on my phone. It gives some really weird suggestions after certain
words, perhaps it's worth investigating further.

------
avar
Related algorithmic gaffe, "Google Mistakenly Tags Black People as
‘Gorillas,’": [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/01/google-mistakenly-
tag...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/01/google-mistakenly-tags-black-
people-as-gorillas-showing-limits-of-algorithms/)

------
daturkel
The way Google Translate works, which is actually explained pretty nicely by
Google statement quoted in this article, makes this a non-story in my opinion.
Whether by an intentional attack (somehow flooding the Google corpus [the
whole indexed web in a given language?] with biased texts) or a statistical
mishap, this is ultimately fairly uninteresting when you realize that: no, no
one at Google "snuck" this in there.

In the attack scenario, if there were details as to how someone pulled off a
Google-bomb style attack, that would be kind of fun and interesting.
Otherwise, there's not much to say.

~~~
d0mine
How likely that the Ministry of Truth has asked Google to make a "mistake"?

~~~
pekk
Who do you mean by "the Ministry of Truth"?

~~~
crpatino
If you truly did not get it, go read 1984, now.

On the other hand, asking which specific (US) agency plays the exact same role
as the Ministry of Truth in the novel is kind of pointless. The short answer
is none, but that doesn't mean the same kind of propaganda is not happening in
a more nuanced/subtle form nowadays.

------
juanmacuevas
here is another weird translation bug
[https://translate.google.nl/#nl/en/Be%20the%20first%20to%20w...](https://translate.google.nl/#nl/en/Be%20the%20first%20to%20write%20a%20response)

~~~
plexicle
What the hell? How...

------
cimi_
Ukraine is awesome!

They also had Darth Vader running for mayor.

'He joins Peking Duck and a man calling himself Putin in the leadership race.'

[http://www.euronews.com/2015/10/23/ukraine-darth-vader-
runs-...](http://www.euronews.com/2015/10/23/ukraine-darth-vader-runs-for-
mayor/)

------
lisivka
Mordo(r) territory is pictured at old maps north-east to Mordva people. Rus`
captured it and then Russia emerged there, so Google is right (a bit).

------
stonewhite
Also related, Google Translate can "learn" and "translate" lorem ipsum:
[http://tinyurl.com/hue43an](http://tinyurl.com/hue43an)

Not sure if this is a bug or a feature.

~~~
alblue
Lorem Ipsum is a passage quoted from a Latin book "De finibus bonorum et
malorum" and has been used by typesetters for seventy or eighty years. So the
fact it can be translated shouldn't be a surprise.

~~~
duskwuff
Lorem Ipsum is _based_ on that passage, but has been mangled significantly in
the adaptation. "Lorem" is half of the word "dolorem", for instance. So it
can't actually be translated in any real sense.

Instead, if you try translating that passage from Latin, Google Translate goes
nuts. Since "Lorem Ipsum" is used as filler text in a bunch of web sites, it
finds apparently parallel texts all over the place and ends up cobbling
together a "translation" out of random phrases. IIRC, "lorem ipsum" alone used
to translate to something like "click here"? (It's passed through unchanged
now.)

------
dannyrosen
The article's picture of Sergey Lavrov and its caption is comical and clever

------
tangled_zans
This is bizzare for me since I was messing around with the XKCD-substitutions
plugin a few weeks ago, and replacing "Russia" with "Mordor" was one of the
changes that I made.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xkcd-
substitutions...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xkcd-
substitutions/jkgogmboalmaijfgfhfepckdgjeopfhk?hl=en)

------
squozzer
Funny. It reminds me of the time I saw a picture of the Kremlin and thought
"Mordor meets Candyland."

------
Bjartr
Is there a Ukrainian meme "One does not simply walk into Russia"?

------
tellor
I think this error is related with using "suggest translation" issues

------
shmerl
And can you guess whom they translated as Sauron or Morgoth?

And it's not like it's the first time ;)
[http://www.kulichki.com/tolkien/podshivka/970121.htm](http://www.kulichki.com/tolkien/podshivka/970121.htm)

------
amaks
Deservingly.

------
rogeryu
The quotation for 'automated' made me think this was an intentional error made
by Google.

~~~
gus_massa
Apparently the BBC use exact-quotes instead of scare-quotes. More details in
this previous thread about an article in The Guardian:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6446811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6446811)

------
mfer
This was likely an issue of machine learning. The machine learning picked up
on patterns people were using.

Note, I have no inside knowledge. But, the usefulness of machine learning for
things like this.

------
eugenekolo2
Wild guess: It probably took 'Mir', meaning world, kingdom, etc. in Russian,
and made a connection to "Mordor", or perhaps "Mordor" is even spelled as
"Mirdor" in Russian.

~~~
ljak
In modern usage, Mir means world, not kingdom, and Mordor is not spelled
Mirdor. Besides, that's not how Google's translation system works.

~~~
eugenekolo2
Mir can mean numerous things. And how is it not how Google Translate works? Do
you have inside information? Because the only information we have is that it
scours the web, makes connections, and forms a graph. Can feed it some
"corrective" data as well.

------
leojg
Ok, then I suppose that you can't simply walk into russia... ok sorry for the
bad joke

~~~
sageikosa
But you can simply bicycle out (as the stream of Syrian refugees entering
Norway from Russia illustrates). Ergo, you cannot simply walk out of Russia
(to Norway) either.

~~~
csn
This was happening at the Finnish border, too, but just recently Finnish
authorities banned crossing it with a bicycle, officially for safety reasons.

