These are the sorts of things I detail in this article. If it’s epidemiology, economics, or some sort of population study, I can usually spot the problems quite easily. But in a world of Fiverr pseudo-self-appointed editors and increasingly prevalent open access with lower standards and rapid publication, only the smartest and most ethical clients use a specialist. The seemingly good news for me is that specialist editors should be in higher demand than ever. So, as a consequence, more than ever, Google is spitting out text in which a non-specialist would not spot terminology errors. Also, compared with Japanese, there is only one reading of Chinese characters, which leaves much less guesswork for the machine learning. Perhaps it’s the more-consistent patterns in the language. Perhaps it’s the sheer amount of data being input. Not sure why, because I don’t speak Chinese. It’s actually more cunning than ever because the tool seems especially well-trained for Chinese. Sure enough, it’s exactly what’s on the paper I was sent for editing. I know this because I get the original text and drop it in Google Translate to be sure. More than ever, I see the use of Google Translate.

Update in 2021: Since I wrote this in late-2018, it’s really only gotten worse.

Japan to english google translate