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I was trying to pick up my Japanese studies again, and turning to Google Translate as a way to get some daily phrases. "A bowl of rice" was given the plausible characters 米のボウル, but transliterated as "Amerika no booru". Cooked rice (kome) and America do share a kanji, but you wouldn't read it that way!
I shared with my friend in Japan, who laughed, then said you wouldn't read it as "Amerika" even when talking about America.
Also that "kome no booru" was like a bowl made out of rice (plant) or something, and not something you'd say; instead you'd use "ichizen", ichi-zen, zen being an oddly specific counter for bowls of rice or pairs of chopsticks.
So, multiple levels of machine translation fail!
I shared with my friend in Japan, who laughed, then said you wouldn't read it as "Amerika" even when talking about America.
Also that "kome no booru" was like a bowl made out of rice (plant) or something, and not something you'd say; instead you'd use "ichizen", ichi-zen, zen being an oddly specific counter for bowls of rice or pairs of chopsticks.
So, multiple levels of machine translation fail!