In your first example, Google does have the correct translation on the Translate page, but is using "related phrases" for the onebox. This should be pretty simple to fix.

google.com/search?hl=de&q= ...

I am a technical translator and I find Google to be the best of the free translation sites. It's still not a threat to my profession, but it sometimes gives surprisingly good results.

I understand that it uses "statistical" translation, not the human-like way of parsing sentences and looking up translations of individual terms. One result is that it does a better job on complete sentences, paragraphs, and web pages, than it does on short terms. That's because the program has more context to help guide each translation.

Try to Translate "Son" in French , and Google will Show you how to say "son of a bitch" in Frech ...

i wrote Blogged about this here : dzordre.com/google-ajoute-la-t ...

[edited to expand URL minimizer]

So, it seems that Google reads my posts here (at least the first lines!):
blogoscoped.com/forum/103309.h ...
:)

Steven is correct, it is still too unreliable to use for translations. An alternative to free online translations is www.wordreference.com, a multilingual dictionary where you can also post questions in the forum.

[Signature URL removed – Tony]

It doesn't work when you try translate to Arabic.