The students at my school use Chromebooks and they often use Google Translate in class, to varying levels of success. The 1st years (7th graders) had to write speeches about famous people they admired. The students picked various comedians, athletes, actors, singers, and YouTubers. The 1st years are the most comfortable with me and understand that I can speak some Japanese, so they actually asked me to check their speeches or how to spell things. Toward the end of class, one of my students asks me to check her speech about her favorite singer. Her sentences look pretty good, but then I get to the last sentence. It says "he is very very very twink" (twink is a somewhat derogatory word for effeminate gay man). I look at her for a second, wondering how the heck could she know this word, then burst into laughter and told her I don't think that's the word she wants.
Class ended and she walks up to me with her Chromebook and types "イケメン"(hot guy) into Google Translate and "twink" pops up. She starts trying to type in イケメン in different forms to get the meaning of twink, but isn't having any luck. While this is not an accurate translation, what Japan considers a hot guy is considered pretty girly from a Western standpoint, hence that translation.
At this point, the other students have crowded around and are also trying to help her Google Translate her way to a definition of the word that made me laugh so much. They weren't succeeding and it was close to time for me to leave. I can't have them Googling that word in their spare time, so I decided to explain in my best Japanese what the word means. Eventually I told them it's a man that looks like a woman and they all went "Ooooooooooh" and started laughing. The teacher saw this all go down and thought it was a great lesson to them in not just trusting Google Translate.
Later that night I reported the incorrect translation to Google. As funny as it is, it does result in Japanese 12 year olds calling their favorite handsome singer a twink, so should probably fix that. However, as of writing this it is not fixed, so there are probably more Japanese 12 year olds calling their favorite singers twinks.
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