Imagine you’re driving in a foreign country and a police officer stops you on the road. You don’t speak the cop’s language and they don’t speak yours, so a halting exchange ensues using a laptop and Google Translate. You’re not always sure what the officer is asking, and you end up agreeing to something you didn’t quite understand, and are arrested.
That’s what happened to Omar Cruz-Zamora, a Mexican native in the US on a legal visa, in Kansas last September. Based on a typed exchange using Google Translate, he agreed to let police search his car—he wasn’t legally required to—and was arrested for possession of 14 pounds of cocaine and methamphetamines. On June 4, a Kansas court granted Cruz-Zamora’s motion to suppress the evidence, finding Google Translate isn’t good enough for constitutional search purposes.
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Thailand
Local time: 04:08
English to Thai
+ ...
In my country, Thailand, courts are extremely authorized to justify overall incidences in the world independently. They are superpower e.g. to accept or decline Google Translate statements without other supports.
We translators need to fight against the incidences very strongly otherwise we will only lose in games.
Soonthon Lupkitaro
Spain
Local time: 23:08
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
There is lots wrong with the situation.
For example, the U.S. has a growing bilingualism problem. There simply are not enough qualified translators/interpreters to work on demand. If things remain as they are, hopefully in the future Google Translate (or other) will be good enough to ask for and receive consent.
[Edited at 2018-08-23 13:34 GMT]
Local time: 23:08
French to English
Translators know about the limits of tools such as Google Translate, or at least they should. That is not the case for the general public. The facts of this case are an excellent illustration of that and make near fiction of the fact that the guy in question was actually loaded. The absence of a translator meant that the lawyer got the lion's share... once again!
France
Local time: 23:08
Member (2013)
French to Ukrainian
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Curious that I have spotted this article while reading "The Black Swan" of Nassim Taleb who tells about how we are far from predicting things in general, partially and in total. So, the British Judge`s prediction sounds like an anecdote to me:) Cases like that won`t take our jobs as translators and interpreters, quite on the contrary, they will return them to us;)
Spain
Local time: 23:08
Italian to English
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For example, when the cop asked to see Cruz-Zamora’s driver’s license, he typed the query into Google Translate in English, then showed Cruz-Zamora the results on the laptop screen. Cruz-Zamora responded by quizzically repeating the question as Google had translated it in Spanish, which actually meant “Do you have a driver for the license?”
Local time: 17:08
Russian to English
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The decision centered on whether there was knowing consent, not on how good or bad Google translate was. There was another case refer... See more
The decision centered on whether there was knowing consent, not on how good or bad Google translate was. There was another case referenced in the decision from Texas in which the officer had pointed to his eyes, then the trunk and said "¿Puedo buscar?" In that case, it was determined that the consent was knowing. ▲ Collapse
United States
Local time: 17:08
English to Finnish
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into Finnish, Google translates "lawful underware"
Local time: 00:08
Romanian to English
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into Finnish, Google translates "lawful underware"
Same into Hungarian. At least we know they are not contraband goods!
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