• Google Needs French Lessons; Translates "Vimeo" to "YouTube"

    Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

    Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

    How do you say Vimeo in French? Google Translate thinks it is pronounced “YouTube.” It is translating the English sentence “videos on Vimeo” into “des videos sur YouTube” when prompted to translate from English to French. When you try to translate Vimeo alone (not in a sentence), the French translation results in “Vimeo.” But in a sentence, Google translates Vimeo into “YouTube.”

    Is this a glitch or some Easter egg hidden by a French Google engineer as an inside joke? The glitch only appears when translating from English to French. It translates fine to other languages.

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