Japanese Online Translator Comparison

Sometimes I have fun by trying to see how a Japanese sentence can be translated into English and vice versa. Not sure how bad this can be with other languages but there are huge grammatical differences between these two languages and online translation software is having difficulties. I picked a sentence from Re-Ment miniature web site at http://www.re-ment.co.jp/products/sample_shiawase/index2.html. I'm using this sentence:

シリコンスチーマーを女性社員の熱い意見で入れました。

So what does this mean? The first word "シリコンスチーマー" is "silicone steamer", a very popular kitchen gadget in Japan. According to what I read, this thing can be placed in a microwave to steam things very quickly. The next word "女性社員" is "female employee(s)". In Japanese, singular and plural aren't always clearly distinguished. So although this word is singular, it could mean several of them. The next word "熱い意見" means "hot opinion" or "enthusiastic opinion". "入れました" means "included" or "inserted". Basically this sentence means something like "we have included silicone steamer by enthusiastic opinion of female employees". On their web site, they are explaining about their new miniatures and how they decided to make the particular items. If you translate literally, this was by the opinion of a single female employee, but it is more likely that several of them had the same strong opinion. Japanese language doesn't explicitly use plural in general.

This particular sentence seems to be very difficult for online translators to translate. Here is the list of what I got from different translator software.

• translate.google.ca --- I put in the opinion of silicon steamer hot female employees.
• translation2.paralink.com (babylon translator) --- The silicon satellit female employees in the hot opinions.
• translation2.paralink.com (Microsoft translator) --- Put the pasta in fruitful discussions, the female employees.
• freetranslation.com --- I put in a/the silicon steamer with the hot opinion of a/the woman employee. 
• systransoft.com/free-online-translation --- shirikonsuchima was inserted with the opinion where the woman employee is hot. 

There are some other sites that gave one of these translations as well. For this particular sentence, freetranslation.com wins.

It is so funny to read all these translations, but as you can see, you shouldn't trust these software in general.

Image by Bender.Secondlife on flickr