Some kind of human error during training seems likely - the intonation isn't neutral, it fits the context. Maybe they were trying to fix the pronunciation for that one phrase, but applied it incorrectly.
Does Google still allow translation suggestions & help? Sounds like a cleverly executed prank that resulted in the database getting bad information added.
I'd cite a page number but I don't have the novel on me. I seem to recall I'm Feeling Lucky mentioning that in Google's infancy, the user translation project left curse words on an alternate language version of Google's homepage for a short time, which led to the abandonment of user translated material for important Google properties.
Reminds me of that bug back in 2007 when Google translate would take "sarkozy is chirac" and translate it into "Bush is classless" or other completely different text.
This is probably just an artifact of how Google Translate works. It uses statistics to see corresponding terms and presumes that that's how it's translated. Sarkozy used to be president of France, Bush of USA. What was probably happening was that the phrase "President Bush" was being matched up against "président Sarkozy". So it figures out "President" in French is "président" (correct) and "Bush" in French is "Sarkozy" (incorrect).
Sometimes "Baile Átha Cliath" (the Irish for "Dublin", the capital city of Ireland) gets translated as "London" (the capital of the UK). This is due to Google Translate trying to match up Laws in Ireland (in the Irish language) with UK laws (which would be very similar or potentially based on the same original law). However in the Irish law "Baile Átha Cliath" would be replaced with "London".
Here's an example of it: http://translate.google.com/#ga/en/L%C3%A1%20alainn%20inniu%....
My favorite one, since fixed, was translating "amistad" from Spanish to English. It would produce, of course, "friendship". Translate "amistad!" with an exclamation point, and it produced "friendship!" Adding more, "amistad!!" produced "friendship!!" But once you got up to five or so, it suddenly switched and produced "murder!"
Has the issue been fixed already ? I was not able to reproduce it by doing a English to french translation of 'filled with' and doing a pronunciation. I did see the YouTube video demonstrating the problem though.
I can't reproduce it either, perhaps it has something to do with localized and personalized stuff that Google always tries to slap on every request (obviously, I'm not from US).
EDIT: it works if I use one of the provided links (see comments below) for US female voice.
At the risk of engaging in humour on HN, when my computer starts to tell me "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again", I will worry.
It's reproducible for me in Google Now on my phone (Galaxy Nexus), but not in Google Translate.
Google Now is using a female American voice, but with low quality emphasis. Google Translate is using a male UK voice, with much better emphasis. I don't know how to configure each to choose which voice.
The Google Translate link in a comment elsewhere, that forces the American pronunciation (and high quality emphasis), reproduces it. The default, UK pronunciation, does not.
Wow, this speaks volumes about their QA process, especially for Android. This bug is known since October '12, how hard can it be for a company with 50k employees to fix a bug like this?
Yes I know, this is a bug in Google Translate. However, the bug was found by a user using Google Now and was reported in the Android issue tracker. The issue was described very well and is reproducible. I am criticizing that nobody seems to check the reported issues and the time it takes for Google to fix the reported problems.
http://translate.google.com.mx/?hl=en#auto/en/Larry%20Page%2...