Google suggests el primo for a female cousin. Why?
Sentence; "She is Robert's cousin."
My spoken translation; "Es la prima de Roberto."
From the Translation tab:
Google; "Es el primo de Robert."
Machine; "Ella es el primo de Robert."
Why would the transltions use "el primo'" Is this just a hazard of using computer translations or am I missing something, as usual'
12 Answers
Heidita,
Ooops... I joke around about 90% of the time but often fail to racognize when someone else is usuing my form of humor! :D
It is clear that literal translations are difficult. Get someone from the Bay area talking with someone from the Bronks or Australia, etc. and often confusion or "what do you mean by..." will ensue. When the concept doesn't exist in the other culture translation might be impossible.
Then, it seems I am actually smarter than the computers because even I could discern the subject of that sentence.
Samdie, nicely stated.
Heitor, To find a decent translator for a specific language I have used "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Translate it from English then take the result and translate back to English. In addition, it appears I disagree with the "phlisophers" once again! Thanks for the humor. :D
Your responses and eductation are very much appreciated.
To properly translate a message, you need to find its meaning in the original language, then construct a sentence that is as close as possible in meaning to the original. Except for the most trivial sentences, some meaning is always lost in translation, but good translators are capable of making that loss of meaning as small as possible.
Now people who write programs to translate text have a crucial, intractable philosophical problem: nobody has a clue what "meaning" is. It's one of those mysteries buried deep in human nature. Because of that, there is no way to write a computer program that can convert a string of letters into an electronic representation of its meaning.
Google has taken an original approach: it ignored the question of meaning altogether. There are some philosophers who argue that meaning does not really exist, that it is just an illusion, and that language comprehension is just a problem of pattern matching (this would imply that we don't really understand what we hear or read, we just have the illusion that we do). The efficiency of Google's translator is evidence that those philosophers may be right; on the other hand its ridiculous blunders are evidence that they may be wrong. Only time will tell.
(Just for fun, try translating those in Google: "señor ten piedad" and "señor ten casa")
For computers, looking up a word is trivial. Strictly speaking, looking up a phrase, is also trivial (if, in fact, the phrase is present in the database). The problem lies in creating the database. Entering a bunch of words is tedious but not unreasonable. Entering phrases is much more difficult (there are so many possible variations). Entering sentences is pointless, there is no theoretical limit to the possible ways in which words can be combined to make a sentence.
As a result a machine translation does not "translate" your sentence; it looks up a word (couple of words) and provides a translation for it/them. It then proceeds to tackle the next word(s) (with no reference to what has gone before, much less, what follows). Ask any human translator "What does X mean'" and the first thing that he will say is "Give me context." We don't use words in isolation; we use them in phrases/sentences and the surrounding context is usually crucial to understanding the meaning of the word(s).
hi hombre, no, I was not saying you were making some kind of accusation, just kidding around.
No, robert has nothing to do with it. I was saying, as the word cousin or friend do not define gender,* that* is the problem. The machine is stupid, so even saying: she is my cousin, the machine does not see this is a female.
I mean if you say: MY cousin is in town. We would not know the gender, so a logical translation, we take automatically the male: Mi primo está en la ciudad.
Not our fault my friends
Both friend and cousin can be male or female. Any machine will use male, so will anybody who does not have a name, for that matter.
if you say to me:
My friend goes to school.
My translation would be : MI amigo va al colegio.
We automatically take the male. If we have a name, we are better than machines, jeje.
Seems as if I have a habit of not saying things correctly. I apologize for making it seem as if I thought this website was responsible for the actions of Google, et al. I may have to add such a statement as a signature since I'm now 2 for 2.
Thank you very much. Perhaps you could clarify a new issue on this topic. I would have thought that prima would have been used because She is the subject and she is the cousin.
So, is primo actually referring to Robert, as it could be in Spanish or simply because Robert is male and somehow the interpreters know this.
Examples
If actually referring to Robert then:
"He is Maria's cousin" would use "la prima" (taking on the gender of Maria).
However if it is because a male was referred to then only something like "She is Maria's cousin" would we ever use "la prima".
Contrary to the belief of many, a noob/n00b and a newbie/newb are not the same thing. Newbs are those who are new to some task and are very beginner at it, possibly a little overconfident about it, but they are willing to learn and fix their errors to move out of that stage. n00bs, on the other hand, know little and have no will to learn any more. They expect people to do the work for them and then expect to get praised about it, and make up a unique species of their own.
Don't trust the machines!!!!
Let me guess. The Terminator series? or 2001: A Space Odyssey? Actually that could be taken from a number of Sci-Fi movies. 
Not our fault my friends 
Both friend and cousin can be male or female. Any machine will use male, so will anybody who does not have a name, for that matter.
if you say to me:
My friend goes to school.
My translation would be : MI amigo va al colegio.
We automatically take the male. If we have a name, we are better than machines, jeje.
I tried 'She is my friend' and the result was 'Ella es mi amigo' :(
Thanks for the responses. I'm just such a newb that it seemed prudent to ask.
Don't trust the machines!!!!
I do have a primo that acts like a prima 
, but "normally" it would be "ella es la prima..."
