Reading リラックマ生活 - Me vs Google Translate

I found some copies of リラックマ生活 in a book store, and I decided to buy them since #1, adorable art, #2, looks hilarious, #3 Japanese study as well :wink:

I skimmed much of the opening pages (since they’re beyond my level and I didn’t want to spend too much time on it yet), and went into the main pages, and I’ve found differences between my translations and Google’s, and I’m not sure which is right. (And if Google’s is, why their’s is correct?)

毎日同じように見えても違うんですよ。
I translated that to: Even if it looks the same every day, it is different.
Google: Even though it looks the same every day, it does not matter.

The “even if” versus “even though” isn’t as important to me as the end bit.

もつれた糸は放っておきましょう。
Mine: Let’s leave the tangled thread alone.
Google: Let go of the tangled thread.

Breaking both down piece by piece in Google Translate, the translations basically match mine, but once the sentences are all put together, then they drastically change, and I have no idea what’s going on. Any help would be appreciated x’D

When I put the same thing into google translate the first phrase translated exactly as you translated it. Weird. Second translated the same as it did when you tried though. I think the way you translated both is fine. I don’t know where “it does not matter” came from. The second one has ましょう so translating it as let’s makes sense. 放っておく is to leave someone alone/leave something as is. So I guess if you were pulling on the thread it would make sense to say let go of the thread. Or maybe let go as in give up control/leave alone kinda makes sense.

But yeah, google translate isn’t all that accurate, especially for sentences, especially for Japanese. Individual words will usually be fine, and common phrases will generally be accurate because they’ve been translated before and someone’s corrected the translation if it was inaccurate before. It kind of just translates words individually and pieces it together but normally doesn’t reflect the change in meaning from different conjugations and it can’t tell context like a human can so if there’s something in the surrounding text that gives something a different meaning it won’t pick up on it. And sometimes it just turns into nonsense like this. The first translation it gives is right but the second makes no sense and I don’t even know how it happened.

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Thanks for double checking! <3 I know Google isn’t the best, but I like to use it in conjunction with other methods just to try to analyze sentences more. I typically take them with a grain of salt, but these two just made me anxious and doubt myself x’D Glad to know I’m on the right track though! I’ll keep onwards with reading, perhaps with more confidence now, haha.

That second sentence is pretty great in your example XD Gotta love Google.

Thanks again! :slight_smile:

No problem glad I could help :slight_smile:

To go with nutmeg’s comment about Google translate not being all that accurate… Have you ever played around with Translation Party?

It’s a fun website that translates an English sentence to Japanese and back again - multiple times until it gets the same results twice - using Google translate. It is hilarious.

Highly recommend it.

EDIT: For example…

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You are already a better translator than Google Translate.

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@AnimeCanuck Thanks! I have never heard of them :o Seems like a fun website to play around with, haha.

@tel003a Aww x3 Thank you!

You’re welcome! : )

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