It has gotten better since the days of me posting various "Engrish" I would see that were posted officially on wayfinding signage in places like Tokyo and Shinjuku stations, Haneda Airport, rest areas along the national expressway system and so forth.
There's one way that I know of which while not technically evading the inexorable grinding misery of entropy, will ensure that you remain blissfully unaware of it.
This problem stems from この先 being able to mean “ahead from here in space”, or in time which (mis)translated to “the future”. Without proper context (that it is a sign on a road) the translation software had to make a guess, and it guessed wrong.
It may be possible to infer from 前へ行く in the second sentence that it is more likely referring to space than time, but I still think it is possible to construct some similar sentences which even humans might misunderstand.
Google Translate is generally hot garbage. I've actually found DeepL surprisingly good especially with more "niche" languages like Finnish, although it does definitely sometimes get things hilariously wrong
To be fair, It looks like a problem with the OCR from the app rather than the translation. When I use the phone's native OCR and copy/paste the text into DeepL Translate, I get the same result as you.
I distrust DeepL ever since I found out it translates "irritating" into german as "irritierend" (which means confusing, and is a common mistranslation for obvious reasons). Though I'm sure google translate does similar dumb things.
Duden apparently agrees but it's a rare enough use case that I've never heard it used that way in my life, fair enough tho. Still not a great default tl but at least somewhat acceptable then.
Those are rather common words so depending on your learning source you should be able to read most of it (enough to understand meaning) in a month or two.
From this picture definitely worth learning first are those words imo:
行く - to go
先 - ahead, first
前 - before, in front (of)
ない - not
この、これ - this (I recommend to look it up because it's little more complicated than 'this')
Remember to be consistent in your studies, it's better to learn for 10 minutes every day than an hour every week.
I'm using Duolingo. That should be good enough to start learning, right? I don't expect to be able to read and write all 50,000 kanji through it, but I hope to at least eventually be able to watch Japanese media without subtitles.
Duolingo is good for the first few days to see what the language is about but as a main learning resource I'd say it's pretty bad.
When I was starting, there was just not enough content and after finishing it all I still couldn't understand hiragana fully.
Things have gotten better in recent years that's why I decided to revisit Duolingo a few months ago but I found content to be so inconsistent and impractical. Sometimes they teach you something simple and sometimes you get a word that is usually at the end of any language course.
Many sentences are just dumb and/or have no use in real life.
Once I got to translate: 「私はりんご」which to be fair is a sentence that one could say and it wouldn't be weird but not only you don't have a context but the accepted translation was "I'm an apple". Which is obviously ridiculous. Correct but ridiculous. It feels like they took out of context examples and decided to put it in "translate this sentence category".
If you're wondering btw how this sentence could be used it's worth remembering that "私は" means "As for me" not "I am" so for example when someone asks your name you say:「私はトムです」which literally means "As for me Tom". It sounds weird though so obviously we translate it as "I'm Tom". Same with apple, "As for me Apple" can be an answer to a question "What fruits do you like?"
If you want to learn quickly I recommend downloading the Anki app. It's a flashcards system where you can download premade decks of cards or create your own. I started with popular Anime/VN vocabulary deck and then some N5 vocabulary deck. When you want to go to the next level you download 2k/6k deck.
If you still struggle with hiragana and katakana then I really recommend tofu guide.. It was so good I learned everything in one day.
As for anything other than vocabulary Tim Kae's "Guide to Japanese" is an absolutely amazing resource.
I also recommend Livakivi on YouTube. He also started with Duolingo and then got into sentence mining in Anki. Now he speaks really good Japanese. I like to watch him for motivation and to see just how much effort is needed for certain level.
Happy to help! I remember getting this video in the recommended tab on YouTube at the right time. If not for this video I'd probably give up on japanese tbh. I felt like I was working really hard with no results. His channel is a gold mine of great learning methods. Depending how serious you are you can do what he's done or like me, study for just a 15 min a day. It might seem low but still depending on the topic I still can understand 70-99% of what's being said.
True those words are N4 but some decks on Anki will include those since those are common words.
But even if you use only N5 decks you can guess the meaning.
When I was starting I barely understood a thing and yet I was able to guess the meaning. You just get: "please ahead **** **** don't go ****". "Yeah it probably means to not go any further."
I mean true, you can't fully read the message but enough to get the meaning.
Your translation isn't bad but I'd say it's too literal. I'd translate it to something like this:
It's dangerous beyond this point, please don't go any further.
Though keep in mind I'm no expert and this could probably be translated better :p
Thanks! About the translation, yeah, my primary concern is putting across the wording of the original, that's why it became too literal. You know, that basic Japanese newbie learner tendency to be too literal.
I am also a bit stumped about the grammar used for the last sentence, but I'm guessing it's some polite construction which wouldn't affect the English translation too much.
Good they fixed it but I wouldn't be surprised if it broke again. Once I was doing a coding project that involved Google Translate and I was using the same sentences for testing. In a week translation has changed 3 times, from bad to good to bad.
The different Google translate frontends have different translations sometimes, it might be that. I think it's the web result and the website being different? Or the app and the website/web result? Idk.
Yeah I meant the post OP. While the title says "Google translate" I see no reason to believe it's that rather than some other product....especially as it's not reproducible.
Probably just something they came across and made an assumption, rightly or wrongly.
Tagalog, my native language, has one that I've always wondered about: ‘umay.’ I would translate it as “too delicious, it's almost sickening.”
Imagine a cake that's too delicious, overwhelms your senses with sweetness, tartness, bitterness and all the good things that in moderation, would have made for a perfectly delicious cake. For example, “Masarap naman yung cake ni Maria, kaso nakaka-umay” (“Maria's cake is delicious, really, but it's a bit too much for me”). I guess one can put it as ‘too much,’ or ‘overwhelming,’ but there's this additional element of “it's actually kinda good, you know, but it went a bit too far.”
Now, I've been wondering if it's related to the Japanese 美味い (うまい), and the wiktionary entry I linked earlier has it as a possible origin. I find it kinda (morbidly) funny wondering if it got its present meaning during the second world war, when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. I'd imagine Filipinos would just keep saying "it's delicious, it's delicious," just to placate the Japanese, even if they're already too sick and tired of it.
上下左右 (じょうげさゆう). Means "top, bottom, left, and right". It isn't used very often, but it's useful for talking about web design, which is how I first encountered it.
拘り (こだわり) when used for food. It's easier to translate it as a verb (拘る), which means to be particular about something. 玉子に拘っている can very simply be translated as "We're particular about eggs", but 拘りの玉子サンド is much more difficult to translate. In this usage, it means that lots of care, thought, time, and/or work has been put into getting it right. There are a few translations you could use, but I don't think any one of them had quite the same nuance. Jim Breen dictionaries translate them as "speciality", but I don't think it captures the original meaning at all. You could translate it as "artisanal" or "finest", but that gives it more of a high-end or luxury sounding nuance. "Meticulously crafted" is also close, but that sounds like something very complex or elaborate, whereas the original can be used for simple things.
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