I guess Korean is the only language (found so far) for which Rudd Wine Shop have been successful…

Maybe there’s far too much material in Cantonese and Mandarin that provides better translations for “Rudd” and as such, the system won’t be so amenable to suggestions from the public.

Firstly, Korean is not spoken in Hong Kong; not commonly anyway. So I doubt Google Translate would insert this advert for a translation from English to Korean, but not for a translation from English to Mandarin or Cantonese. Furthermore, as Simon points out, Google always identify paid content as advertising, so this should be no different.

Secondly, for the overgeneralised corpus technique of translation to be the culprit, you’d have to say that there is some English corpus text somewhere that has a corresponding Korean text, wherein, if the English version has the string Rudd, then the Korean version has the string Rudd 전화 +852 2907 2112. I think this is unlikely because, first, surely the English text would similarly have the phone number of the wine shop – it’s more of an English speaking region than Korean – and second, Google’s sophisticated algorithms would probably throw up a red flag when a single word in English corresponds in Korean with the very same word, two Korean words, and a phone number complete with international telephony prefix.

What I think is going on is much less exciting. Notice at the bottom of the Google Translate page is a javascript link reading Suggest a better translation. Clicking it brings up a text box where you type in a better translation that the one that Google is giving you. Next to the box is this description:

We’ll use your suggestion to improve translation quality in future updates to our system.

Would Google sift through probably millions of translation suggestions every day and make a judgement for each? Not likely. I think what is likely is that if the exact same string gets suggested as a translation for some other string, a certain number of times, then Google’s algorithms will accept it.

Ergo, Rudd Wine Shop has diligently and deliberately inserted this ad into Google’s highly fallible system.

This may be more likely than Google inserting advertisements on the sly as generally they are required and do identify that which is advertisement and that which is not quite clearly.

In your original article, you have the following quote: “And since the text of Kevin Rudd’s first parliamentary act as Prime Minister…”. I noticed that it contained the word “Rudd”, which you had mentioned was ‘attached’, so to speak, to the phone number, and which also happens to be the name of the wine shop the phone number goes to. So I decided to type it into Google Translate. When you translate just the word “Rudd” (English to Korean), it returns “Rudd 전화 +852 2907 2112″. So I think this is where the translation came from.

As for why it did this, it reminds me of the Google ads in Gmail that try to match what is contained in your current email. Since there is a Rudd wine shop in Hong Kong, and they were translating an entire webpage into Korean, maybe it tried to create a related link and/or advertise for something (?) and they ended up with that number. I also noticed that this does not occur if you try to translate “Rudd” into any other languages, so it seems the translated language and the regions it is often spoken in come into play somehow. Maybe you could try translating other words from a given language into English which would have an associated phone number with them? I tried “Forzieri” from Italian to English, but it didn’t come up with anything interesting.

Anyway, this reminds me of those short murder mysteries… following the lead until you find out “who done it”. =)

Is this a new form of advertising? By stealth on Google Translate?

The plot thickens.

My housemate just rang it and got the wine shop. I was about to post an update, but you beat me to it.

But we’s getting some fine wine from Hong Kong!

And what’s more intriguing still is that your blog thinks I’ve already posted this comment when I haven’t pressed submit yet…