Sacrebleu! Googleplex insists Bush is still le président américain

Google wonks beavering away at translating snippets of French into the English language might wish to take note of the following fact - their system thinks "le président américain" is "Bush".

That's George W Bush, we suppose.

Reg reader Robert spotted the amusing cockup when he tried to translate an article from daily French newspaper Le Monde.

Our man popped the following sentence into Google translate and waited for the Googbots to work their magic.

Only to get this surprising translation:

As we all know, old W was cut loose from the White House in January 2009 after two terms, and was soon replaced by one Barack Obama – a man currently seeking another four years in the Oval Office – after Republican candidate John McCain lost the November 2008 race.

But Google Translate DOESN'T KNOW.

In fairness to the Chocolate Factory, it doesn't make the same mistake when the words "le président américain" are chucked into the translator. But they get very poorly lost in translation when Google is confronted with a wordy sentence from Le Monde.

We at Vulture Central did enjoy the fact that Google Translate does appear to spot the anomaly – even if it fails to correct it, as evidenced here:

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