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Comment by eptcyka | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand, 53 is 53 in all languages, how could it possibly be a translation error?

Unrelated to OP, but Google Translate is notoriously bad about translating numbers from Japanese. It just can't help slappin' more zeros or the word "million" on the end when that wasn't in the source.

What I'm saying is, if machine translation was involved at any step don't expect it to understand the concept of numbers - it just correlates characters that appear in one document with characters that appear in a supposedly equivalent document in the target language, then applies that transformation to what you requested.

Depending on typeface, your eye's performance and distance a 5 could be mistaken for a 9 easily.

Oh sure, but if you're looking at this text, you're also reading it. If you're a person, it's reasonable to assume reading comprehension (as opposed to an AI), and the sentence should just not parse. So I can only assume this is a typo and not a mistranslation. Unless they're using machine translation and OCR.

> [...] it's reasonable to assume reading comprehension [...]

I think you overestimate the service and work provided by individuals "translating" and copying/posting these articles. Especially cross-copied news articles require high volume output in a short amount of time to be economical. That's why you have so many nonsensical errors in translated articles, especially the ones aimed at click-baiting you. Like putting the name of some random porn provider next to a phrase without providing any meaningful conclusion for example ... oh wait.

At that point, is it a translation error or is it just a typo? I just struggle to come up with a situation where one would translate numerical values into different values when translating from german to english.

7 8 9

4 5 6

1 2 3

your finger slips, what key could it hit?

A typo is an error that could be made during the process of translation, but it's not a translation error, it's not something that's lost in translation or mistranslated.

I think the question whether a typo occuring during translation is a translation error is mostly a matter of perspective. If you ordered the translation and it contains a typo not present in the original article, that's an error in the translation so it's fair to consider it a translation error.

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