Niin minäkin sinua!

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Spirit of the Forest
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Joined: Fri May 29, 2015 11:37 pm

Niin minäkin sinua!

Post by Spirit of the Forest » Mon Jun 22, 2015 5:19 pm

So I told my cousin that I love her. "Minä haluan sanoa sinulle minä rakastan sinua". She replied with "niin minäkin sinua!" Which I know in this context means I love you too.

But I wanted to see exactly how Google Translate would translate it. I put in just "Niin minäkin sinua". It translated it, strangely enough, to "I love you". I then added an exclamation mark, "Niin minäkin sinua!", and then Google strangely translated it to "I love you too!"

What gives? Is this a special kind of phrase? How could Google Translate possibly have known the context?

EDIT: Also, I know that the phrase should mean something like "and I you!". I was just wondering why Google translated it immediately to "I love you".



Niin minäkin sinua!

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Jukka Aho
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Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:46 am
Location: Espoo, Finland

Re: Niin minäkin sinua!

Post by Jukka Aho » Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:25 pm

Spirit of the Forest wrote:What gives? Is this a special kind of phrase? How could Google Translate possibly have known the context?

EDIT: Also, I know that the phrase should mean something like "and I you!". I was just wondering why Google translated it immediately to "I love you".
Google Translate uses statistical machine translation, not grammatical analysis.

Apparently, in real texts used to train the system, that phrase is so often found in that particular context that interpreting it as if that context were a given has become the default mode of operation for Google Translate. Google Translate now thinks they mean the same.

See here for more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Tr ... ethodology
znark

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Spirit of the Forest
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Re: Niin minäkin sinua!

Post by Spirit of the Forest » Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:31 pm

Alright. I guess I can't really rely on it much in the future, then. Thanks.

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Spirit of the Forest
Posts: 68
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Re: Niin minäkin sinua!

Post by Spirit of the Forest » Tue Jun 23, 2015 1:45 pm

tummansininen wrote:Keep in mind that if you say this in Finnish then you really, really mean it :lol:
Haha, right on, paljon kiitoksia. :lol:

Spencerville Slim
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Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 3:33 am

Re: Niin minäkin sinua!

Post by Spencerville Slim » Wed Jul 01, 2015 6:40 am

Cousins?

My old dad was from Cape Breton, where they had a joke: "If a couple from Cape Breton get a quickie divorce in Reno, are they still considered brother and sister?"

NTTAWWT.

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Spirit of the Forest
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Re: Niin minäkin sinua!

Post by Spirit of the Forest » Sun Jul 05, 2015 2:21 pm

Spencerville Slim wrote:Cousins?

My old dad was from Cape Breton, where they had a joke: "If a couple from Cape Breton get a quickie divorce in Reno, are they still considered brother and sister?"

NTTAWWT.
Haha. Yeah well, naturally we didn't mean it like that.


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