English to Latin google translate seems to work for most words, but the translation from English "sonic" seems odd to me (a Latin non-speaker/reader/writer):
Is this accurate, and if so, what is GENIUS? (and why is it in all caps?)
No! The Latin word genius means something like a spirit, and has nothing to do with "sonic". Google Translate is not to be trusted at all with Latin, and you have found yet another piece of evidence of this.
The word sonic comes from the Latin word sonus, "sound". From this noun you can derive the adjective sonicus, "sound-related", but it does not appear in classical Latin. In any case, I think sonicus is the best Latin translation of the English "sonic". And this should make sense; a sonic boom is a boom related to sound. It has nothing to do with "genius".
answered Sep 25 '20 at 12:00
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2Can we have a tag for collecting bad Google Translate examples? I can see myself using these as an example for something in the future – Nacht Sep 26 '20 at 1:43
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1@Nacht The best list is the list of questions linked to the Google Translate question. At least I've been linking to it actively to build that repository of examples. If you'd like a tag, I suggest asking a meta question. – Joonas Ilmavirta♦ Sep 26 '20 at 5:30
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1@Nacht a tag could be useful. Especially if google eventually uses it to identify incorrect translations – stevec Sep 26 '20 at 6:09
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2@stevec I strongly encourage you to write up a meta question about such a tag. I wouldn't want to hide such a discussion in these comments. – Joonas Ilmavirta♦ Sep 26 '20 at 10:59
