How retarded would someone look if they translated a whole book using Google translate?

I know an author who wants to translate his writings into Spanish, French and Russian, but can't afford a translator. He says he is going to use "Google Translator" which is free. He's then going to publish the translations and try and sell them.



I told him he would appear to be extremely retarded in the translated language, but just how badly does the translation program work?How retarded would someone look if they translated a whole book using Google translate?
The translation program on google is horrible. Because it's so generalized and offers so many languages I don't think the people who programmed the thing realized that each language is different some languages that may have nouns for things may not use it in day to day talking or writing. Not only are the translations bad, for particular languages like korean for example the translator absolutely sucks! I have tried to use the translator for spanish when I was in high school and it worked out pretty fair but since I was kind of advanced after I ran it through the translator I saw all the mistakes that a person who doesn't speak the language they are translating wouldn't notice. All in all don't use the google translator, the best solution I see here, if you're not willing to pay for translation services, is to get a dictionary translate each word of the sentence, then find out for that language what is the order for the parts of a sentence, and put it together. But it'll probably be very tedious but that's the price you have to pay if you don't want to pay the $!
It does sound like quite a ridiculous idea.

Google Translate isn't as bad as it used to be, or as bad as other translators currently are, though. Depending on which language he writes in, the French translation wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as the Russian translation. English to French is much more reliable than English to Russian or English to Spanish, from experience.

Either way, the book wouldn't entirely make sense.
Maybe the author should just publish it in one language, wait until funds are raised from the sales of that book and publish it in other languages after?How retarded would someone look if they translated a whole book using Google translate?
They would look ridiculous. Here's a real-life example of something similar. There were some people who wanted to write a book about English, but who had no knowledge of the language. They had a French-English dictionary, but they didn't speak French either. They spoke Portuguese. The solution: a Portuguese-French dictionary.



Yes, they actually translated every word from Portuguese to French to English. I'm amazed they ended up with anything you could actually read. The title of the book says it all, "English, How She Is Spoke."
Computerized translators are fine if you want the gist of a conversation, are shopping in a foreign country, asking directions, etc. but they will not translate correctly or accurately. The book will often appear to be in gibberish.How retarded would someone look if they translated a whole book using Google translate?
He would just appear like a fraud. I have no idea what sort of publisher would accept, publish, and sell such a ridiculous thing.
When you know a language, google translation will make you laugh.
Very.