Automatic language translation errors

Google makes their translation system, based on machine learning techniques, available to everyone for browser web use for free, and for other commercial type uses for a minimal fee. Their free translation system is great for anyone learning a language. They use crowd sourcing to help improve the system, whereby anyone who sees something incorrect can help provide a better translation. Be aware that some phases do not translate perfectly. Idioms may not translate well. And the case, upper, lower, etc., may not match as the translations are based on machine learning matching.

Modern automatic language translations systems, such as Google Translate, use machine learning and statistical pattern matching rather than language grammar and spelling rules and specific knowledge of the languages being translated.

So, for example, the Greek word for "well", as in a "hole in the ground", might go through English to get translated into Russian as "well", as in "very good".

Google translate is very good at using statistical pattern matching from source and target texts. It has been shown to be clearly better than using rule-based systems. That is, it does not use specific grammar rules, spelling rules, etc., just statistical pattern matching (i.e., machine learning). However, translation issues remain. Greek to Russian translation

This translation my not work well. Google translate has some issues when it translates from, say, Russian to Greek and needs to go through, say, English. Greek to Russian translation

Consider translating Greek to Russian.

The modern Greek word "πηγάδι" (pee-GA-thee) ≈ "well" as in a "hole in the ground from which one gets water".
The modern Greek word "καλά" (ka-LA) ≈ "well" as in "very well".
The English word "well" can mean a "hole in the ground from which one gets water" or it can mean "very good".
The Russian word "хорошо" (ha-ra-sho) ≈ "well" as in "very good".
The Russian word "колодец" (ka-la-dets) ≈ "well" as in a "hole in the ground from which one gets water".

Whenever Google does not have enough source text translated into target text from which to get patterns to do the translation, it uses an intermediate language such as English. This is where some translation issues arise. Note: For some cases such as this, one would need to recognize the problem and then do a more specific search for "well" in English into Russian and then study the (sometimes) long list of alternatives in order to find the correct translation.

This requires one to realize that the initial answer provided is not correct!