One criticism of machine translation (MT) is that it fails to capture the cultural context of many phrases. I've decided to illustrate this by entering a few well known Japanese phrases into Google Translate.
1. 「物の哀れ」is a literary idiom used to describe the sadness that one feels towards the transience of physical things. It is a mellow yet profound sorrow that accompanies the realization that nothing is permanent.
Interestingly, the above translation is listed in Wikipedia as the literal translation. While I don't particularly agree with the literal translation, it is more important to see that the nuanced meaning of the phrase is completely lost.
2.「月が綺麗ですね」is a very famous expression attributed to Natsume Soseki, who chose to translate "I love you" as the above, which literally translates to "the moon is beautiful, isn't it?"
As one would expect, the literal meaning is correctly translated, but the literary meaning has been lost.
3. 「草生える」is a commonly used colloquialism in reaction to a humorous or comedic situation. It literally translates to "grass growing."
As in the previous example, the literal translation is correctly shown, but the colloquial meaning is lost.
4. 「狐の嫁入り」is an expression frequently used to refer to beautiful yet eerie events. Most commonly, it is used to refer to sun showers and other meteorological events, such as a rainbow. Its origins come from legends from the Edo period, in which supernatural events were commonly written down. There are also many regional variations of the phrase and its meaning. It literally translates to "the fox's marriage."
Surprisingly, Google did output a non-literal meaning. Yet, much of the cultural and regional nuance has still been lost as it prefers the most commonly used meaning.
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