Automatic Translations fail to translate entire words and only half of a word is translated

Reproduction Steps

1. Add strings of text to the source column of the GameLocalizationTable.csv file or add entries though the Translate portal
2. [IF DONE WITH A CVS FILE] Do not have a column named after the language that you want automatically translated and upload the file to the Localization plugin window in Roblox Studio. This can be done for ANY language.
3. Turn on Auto Translation for “Experience Strings and Products” in the translator portal for the game.
4. After a minute, translation will be completed. Most of the strings have been automatically translated, but some have not, and some have been only half-translated, leaving the other half in the source language. Some strings have been half-deleted. The bug happens for all languages.

Expected Behavior

I expect the automatic translation to translate all of the strings.

Actual Behavior

Some strings are left untranslated or half-translated, and some strings are half deleted and not translated at all.

Examples of words that have been half-translated:


Ostrich
Woodpecker
Vulture

Examples of words that have been cut in half and not translated:

BEak


Stork

I have tested this in Portuguese, Thai, Chinese(Simplified), German and Russian and the bug occurs in all of these languages.

Workaround

I can go directly into the portal or csv file and manually translate the word or sentence.

Issue Area: Roblox Website
Page URL: https://create.roblox.com/creations/experiences/547524060/localization/translation
Impact: Low
Frequency: Often
Date First Experienced: 2022-02-22 00:02:00 (-08:00)
Date Last Experienced: 2022-08-27 00:08:00 (-07:00)

3 Likes

Hi ShinyGriffin! Thank you for the report. We’re looking into this!

2 Likes

Actually, can you share examples of it happening in Portuguese, Thai, German, and Russian as well? That will help us debug faster! Thank you.

1 Like

Hey George, it looks like the string is fully translated to German. Can you share where is the string being partially translated?

1 Like

Removed for off-topic, confused this with another post, delete my messages if you’d like!

1 Like

Yes, here is the entire CSV file for the automatic translations. All of these are automatic EXCEPT Spanish, which was manually translated, so please ignore the Spanish column.

GameLocalizationTable 8-25-22.zip (25.1 KB)

1 Like

Thank you! We’re looking into this.

Regarding the ‘fail to translate entire words’ bit, sometimes if Roblox Translate doesn’t know how to translate something, we leave it untranslated.

Just curious – if Roblox Translate is unsure how to translate something fully, would you rather get a partial translation or no translation? Or how would you prefer to be notified about this?

1 Like

There are some words in my game that are very specific and uncommon words, so some of them I expected to be untranslated, which is okay. (For example, specific species names of extinct birds) But if there is a word that the translator is unsure about, I would rather it leaves the entire word untranslated rather than translating half of the word. If the word is part of a sentence, I would prefer it translates all the words in the sentence that it can except for the word that it can’t. For example, when it half-translated “Vulture” it wrote “秃ulture”, and “秃” means “bald”. The entire Simplified Chinese for “Vulture” is “秃鹰” (meaning “bald bird of prey”). It seems like it was starting to correctly translate the word, but stopped half way, so this is why I thought it was a bug.

1 Like

I am still having issues with this, mainly affecting Chinese Simplified and Traditional automatic translation.

Word: Thrush (Chinese Simplified and Traditional)

Word: Beak (Chinese Simplified)

Word: Sandpiper (Chinese Simplified and Traditional)

Word: Ostrich (Chinese Simplified)

Word: Vulture (Chinese Simplified)

Word: Woodpecker (Chinese Simplified)

1 Like

This bug is still active and my spanish and latin players are SO CONFUSED.
Can i manually translate it? The system only took half of the words.
For example,
“EARN LIKES” it was translated to
“YA RN ME GUSTA” because “EARN” was only partially translated


1 Like

Hi @cKolmos , thank you for the report. We are continuously improving our translation models so we are hopeful that edge cases like this happens like in the future.
In the meantime, you can manually update the translations by going to the Localization portal - https://create.roblox.com/dashboard/creations > Select the experience you want to manage > click on Localization in the left navigation, click on the Translate button, and look for the string you want to update.