Google Translate once translated 万 (ten thousand in Chinese) to “million” for me. I was shocked it could make such a basic mistake. It wasn’t even that long ago, maybe 2018? Machine translation has a loooong way to go.
Not so bad for a machine, I once met a French Telco guy in charge of buying/selling minutes at a large operator who thought that "billion" meant "two million"
The fact that international confusion over billions doesn't arise more often points out how bad people are at thinking about large numbers. We mostly don't notice the difference between a billion and a trillion.
Same in Norway. I'm from the US and the large numbers always take some thought. I didn't realize that I'd have to relearn counting when moving here, but honestly it is easier than trying to relate the time of day.
It was like that in 2020 as well -- I remember being really confused trying to see how many views a Daoko video on billibilli had.
IIRC at that point it would translate e.g. "23 万" correctly, but 23万 would go to 23 million.
I tried reporting the error, no idea if they actually pay attention to those!
> Machine translation has a loooong way to go.
Since large numbers on e.g. streaming sites are often reported in multiples of 万 in Chinese, but a million in English, I did wonder if the machine "learned" that they were equivalent.
