Original Material
Spokesperson explains why Google Translate thought Russia is Tolkien's land of evil
Google's press office says its translation service simply made a mistake when it started translating “Russian Federation” written in Ukrainian into the word “Mordor” in Russian. According to a company representative, Google Translate functions automatically, offering translations on the basis of patterns found in hundreds of millions of documents.
Google stresses that its system of automatic translation is very technically complex and prone to errors and mistranslations.
“This is why there are errors and mistranslations, which we try to correct as quickly as possible, as soon as we learn about them,” a Google representative said.
- Earlier, screenshots of Google Translate's Lord-of-the-Rings-inspired results circulated on social networks in Russia and Ukraine. In the book by JRR Tolkien, Mordor is the region occupied and controlled by Sauron, the book's main antagonist.
- At the time of this writing, the error on Google Translate has been corrected.