Flashcard translation errors?
Why is madres translated "lees", tiene translated "you have" - formal, and beben translated "he drinks" on the flashcards? Are they in error or am I misunderstanding something?
9 Comments
Lees is actually a really weird word for like the dregs of a liquid, or whatever settles at the bottom, and madres and madres are actually homonyms (spelled and pronounced the same, but mean different things based on context). One translation of madres is mothers, and another is the dregs of a liquid. Now, there is something wrong with the algorithm if it's giving you that obscure of an answer for a simple word, but it isn't wrong per se.
Thank you for your comment! It helped! I forgot about "the mother" in homemade vinegar. Same idea I suppose. Obscure but correct...interesting.
The opposite side of "madres" is "lees"? That's interesting. "Beben" and "he drinks" is surprising too. I've seen reports--and personally--some odd translations for the flashcards, translations that aren't just a multi-meaning word like "traje" meaning both "suit" and "I brought."
"Tiene," on the other hand, that's a correct conjugation using "usted," the so-called "formal you." Here's way more information than I'm sure you wanted to know. Along those lines, "beben" could be "you drink" for a plural "you." (Or "y'all drink," as my in-laws say.)
So I looked up my Words tab, and this is what I get for "madre": mother, great, lees, sediment, terrific
This makes me think that the definitions aren't hand-inputted, they're grabbed from the internet somehow. Like, they're just google translate results, and google is thinking of the Sierra Madre and Laguna Madre. In that case, "lees" isn't "you read" but a term referring to the way wind moves over mountains.. "Sediment" would be another google result influenced by geology and geography. "Great" and "terrific" might be more influenced by slang.
I noticed the same problem in the Italian course for English speakers, for example "pensare" (think) and "credere" (believe) are reversed plus a number of other crazy translations. It made me wonder wether Google translator is being used. That should be fixed as soon as possible and I hope that this problem does not exist in every course as I fear!
Thank you for your comment--I'm wondering if it really is wrong or we just aren't understanding.
Yes, now the tool Words and flashcards seems quite useless, there are sometimes really strange translations even though they are in some sense correct but it is not what you expect from vocabulary trainer, which is a thing I belive is missing here.
this problem also exists in German, I can't think of any specific examples right now but I do remember seeing some weird translations
