About a year ago Google Translate for Latin changed, and started to produce very good translations indeed. I commented on this in April 2022 here. I never saw any announcement of this. But yesterday I again saw something new.
I pasted into the Latin box part of a medieval miracle story of St Nicholas. It produced a quite decent new-style transation. Then, by accident, I clicked on the English of one sentence. A box sprang up, giving two other versions of the same Latin sentence, both somewhat different from mine, and two English translations of them! Here is what I see this morning:
So my sentence reads:
Finita vero oratione, in altum in nomine Domini cubitum et dimidium fodit, continuoque sufficienter emanavit abundantia aquae.
And the default translation is:
Having finished his prayer, he dug a cubit and a half deep in the name of the Lord, and immediately a sufficient abundance of water emanated.
But the popup box also gives:
Having finished his prayer, he dug a cubit and a half deep in the name of the Lord, and immediately a sufficient abundance of water emanated.
Finita oratione, fodit cubitum ac semissem in nomine Domini, et statim emanavit aquarum abundantia.
When he had finished his prayer, he dug a cubit and a half deep in the name of the Lord, and immediately a sufficient abundance of water flowed out.
Finita oratione, fodit cubitum ac semissem in nomine Domini, et confestim fluxit aquae copia.
What on earth is this, I wonder? It’s fascinating, of course. Are there texts out there, in which this version of the Latin may be found, with that translation? I tried googling for the two sentences, with no result. Or is there some other explanation?
Google does fiddle with Google Translate. Boxes can indeed appear, offering various options; and then the facility disappears as silently as it appeared.
Google does not share all of its resources on the web. I once read that there is a server, somewhere, with all of the books in the world on. They scanned them; but the publishers wouldn’t let them use them for Google Books. But that doesn’t mean that they cannot use them in other ways. Possibly this is the source of the other material?
I do wish Google would be more transparent.
