Google Translate: Reincarnated as a Sword 転生したら剣でした [JP to EN]

I did a test of Google Translate on a fantasy web novel to see if the GT can handle fantasy material just as well as real life news texts and such. The chosen text samples are Japanese web novels of 転生したら剣でした (Reincarnated as a Sword) chapters 899 to 1001.

Translation

I'm starting to examine all these translated chapters. It will take time.

Element-imbued Sword

Of interest would be translations for things like an "element-imbued sword". Various translators have named these differently. One call it attribute sword, another called it elemental sword.

A fire element imbued/infused sword would thus have a seemingly awkward name: fire attribute sword or fire elemental sword... which kind of doesn't bring about the fierce nature of the sword, that should have invoked a stronger feel more like when saying it's a fiery sword - imagine flames sheathing the sword! Or flames racing (crackling) around the length of the sword like chainsaw blades buzzing.

Then again, a fire elemental sword in the novel context may just be a red hot piping sword, until the wielder fires a flame attack, then the sword bursts into flames and the flame flares out with the slash.

Similarly, how should a wind-element imbued sword or ice-element imbued sword be named?

Wind sheathed sword? Howling sword? Though 'howling' is a side effect of fierce wind movement around the sword, rather than literally saying it's imbued with the wind elemental. And again, such a sword may not intentionally manifest its nature explicitly, so as to deal a surprise attack with its wind element.

Frozen sword? Ice sword just doesn't quite do it justice.

Gender pronouns

GT is bad with gender pronouns and messes up the he/she, etc.

Translated Text

Oh well, anyway enjoy the novel =)

And support the author by buying the official novels (which covers up to chapters 400+? thus far), and watch the anime adaptation. Season 1 of the anime is complete, while Season 2 has been announced =)

For study of translation efficiency of fantasy material instead of 'real world' text:

Wonder when machine translation will produce perfectly legible results. Perhaps it needs a complete foolproof set of grammatical rules like the recently solved one for Sanskrit. Read about that on goodnewsnetwork.org.

Thanks

Thanks to its author 棚架ユウ Yuu Tanazuka for the fun and amazing novel =)

And the various translators, editors and websites providing the English translations of the web novels up to chapter 859. E.g.: https://seeker142.github.io/Tenken/