Trust tech translation? ‘ddim yn debygol o gwbl!’

THIS IS your regular reminder not to trust machine translation of any kind and it comes via BlueSky user Uilliam Mac G. BBC Cymru Fyw posted a story on Facebook, which helpfully offered what it claimed was a translation into English: “Two farmers from the Powys village have completed an ethnic harvesting challenge over the weekend and have raised money to remember two of the victims.”

You will not be surprised to learn that Uilliam begs to differ with the translation. He tells us that the story in fact reports a 24-hour sheep-shearing marathon by two farmers held to raise money for charity. That seems on the face of it more plausible: can a Welsh-speaking reader please help us with the necessary double-check?

And as a further illustration, we asked Google Translate for the Welsh for “not bloody likely” and we have the impression that it gave us a Bowdlerised version.

© Mike Holderness