Can't we just use Google Translate?

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Google Translate is seemingly everywhere – on phones, I-pads, apps, laptops – everything that has an Internet connection. While the use of Google Translate and other online translation devices is growing, understanding of their limitations is not. Indeed, the assumption that online translation sites and apps are as accurate as their omnipresence is a fraught one and can have serious consequences, as a federal judge recently decided.

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On October 1, 2021, a federal court ruled that Google Translate is not accurate enough for a police officer to use in asking a motorist to consent to a search of her car. In this particular case, the court even found some of the online translations to be “non-sensical.”

Although the court invalidated the defendant’s consent for police to search her car, the court upheld the search as not requiring consent because the police officer had probable cause to conduct a search without the driver’s agreement.

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In the case of United States v. Ramirez-Mendoza, Case # 4:20-CR-00107, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, U.S. District Judge Brann decided:

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“The Court is not convinced that Google Translate accurately translated Conrad’s request for consent into Spanish. The Government bears the burden of proof, but failed to introduce any evidence showing that the word “registrar” actually means “to search.”

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Precision is important, particularly in this context, and the Court believes that more was needed to establish the accuracy of Google Translate…

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It seems… that Google Translate was unable to adequately translate the word Ramirez-Mendoza used to describe her boyfriend’s occupation. The FBI linguist translated her as stating “trailer driver, ” but Google Translate interpreted this as “trailer.”

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Google Translate produced several other Spanish-to-English mistranslations. One occurred when Conrad asked if Ramirez-Mendoza planned to drive back to California with her boyfriend. Google Translate interpreted her as responding “[b]ecause the one in New York goes Kentucky from fifth and leaves Texas.”

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Another was when Ramirez-Mendoza’s answer to the question of what hotels she had stayed in was translated into English as “[d]on’t let and grab another one in Indiana . . . and the other-other hotel in Indiana.” A minor word-level mistranslation appears to have happened when Google Translate interpreted Ramirez-Mendoza as saying she planned to “mark” her boyfriend…

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The app also produced several English-to-Spanish mistranslations. Though more difficult to capture without a verified transcript, these mistranslations are evidenced by instances where Ramirez-Mendoza gave strange answers in response to or needed clarifications of Conrad’s inquiries.

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For instance, when asked “[w]here is the friend that owns the car?” she responded, “she is friend.” When asked the name of the car owner, Ramirez-Mendoza replied “[m]y friend.” Additionally, Conrad’s question asking if Ramirez-Mendoza had been “stopped by” the police was translated to “go by” the police.”

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The findings continued, and we quote:

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“Another factor, of particular importance here, is the existence of a language barrier.

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An officer’s inability to converse with a suspect in a common tongue poses special problems where the officer attempts to solicit the suspect’s consent to a search. This is because difficulties in communication tend to make it harder to determine whether consent was actually provided, and if it was, whether it was voluntarily given.

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Nevertheless, voluntary consent has been found where the evidence demonstrates that the suspect signed a foreign-language consent form, the suspect could speak or understand English, or the police officer could communicate reasonably well with the suspect in her native language…

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While the transcript tends to prove that Ramirez-Mendoza knew that Conrad intended to search her car, the translation …. undercut[s] the Government’s case as the transcript shows that Google Translate revised Conrad’s question into a statement. As a statement that one “like[s] to search” is significantly more coercive than a request, this alone would not be enough to establish voluntary consent. The transcript thus presents strong evidence of coercion which would suggest that Ramirez-Mendoza felt unable to refuse given Conrad’s declaration…

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The Court declines to infer that Google Translate accurately translated and communicated Conrad’s request to search Ramirez-Mendoza’s vehicle solely because it may work well generally.”

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Indeed, the court went further. While finding that Google Translate is a “useful tool”, the court also concluded that the online translation service has “an alarming capacity for miscommunication and error.”

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The court essentially consigned the use of Google Translate to facilitating “basic communication” while also not being an adequate method for more involved, linguistically complex conversations such as protecting the constitutional rights of a suspect or subject.

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The court poignantly reasoned that Google Translate “need only fail once to obviate a suspect’s consent. As a result, the Court cannot hold that Google Translate is sufficiently reliable to presume its accuracy without further verification.”

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One of the key takeaways from this case is that over reliance on Google Translate and similar products behind enabling “basic communication” between people speaking different languages is highly inadvisable. Such misuse can have significant consequences, resulting in substantial translation mistakes leading to regrettably predictable situations that flow from miscommunications and misunderstandings due to a language barrier.