eBay, you are turning your sellers' auction titles into garbage with your translation "feature".

[dinkyman]

Please make auction title translations optional.

[janet9988]

You have not reached Ebay customer service.  We [members] can not change a thing.

[dinkyman]

It seems that this might be news to you but eBay customer service cannot change a thing either.  I am not under the delusion that anthing I say to anyone changes anything. I'm just venting. 

[mudshark61369]

@dinkyman,

Perhaps if you gave us an example of an auction title, and its translation we could help.  Have you tried other translation services besides ebay's?

[dinkyman]

Yes, I like Google's translations but the problem is that you cannot turn off the eBay translation which gets first crack at the title so the title is already corrupted by the time you have control over it.  I would guess that half of my eBay purchases are international so the problem is irritating.  The problem is beyond help and is in eBay's control.  Apparently eBay has deemed that the problem is not worth solving in terms of impact to their revenue.

[mudshark61369]

@dinkyman,

The only time I've had an item translated for me by ebay, is when I opened one of their European based sites. I have never found an item listed by an Italian, German, French seller on ebay.com that was not already translated to English.

  When I login to one of the European sites, searching for things not often found on the U.S. based site,  I have seen a Translate pop up box open saying for example; Translate: German to English. 

I do not enable eBay's translation.  Since I did not select translate button when first logged in, I do not see the pop up again, unless I haven't logged back into the German or other sites for several months, then it does appear. However I use a computer not the app to login.

If you add a foreign site's app after enabling translation once, that app may be remembering your selection and automatically translates Item titles for you when you use the app no matter how long since you visited the site.

I read enough German, french and Italian, to get by on when shopping, so I do not enable translation. Sometimes I have issues with a title but more often, Descriptions written with colloquialisms I don't understand, and that's when I use a separate translation service.  It may not be an exact translation at times, but close enough I can figure it out. 

If you find an item by photo or title you're interested in on a foreign site, copy the seller's username and paste it to an Advanced search, By seller, on ebay.com, to see if their items are listed on this site. If they aren't they do not ship to the U.S., or at least do not state that in their listings.

[dinkyman]

You are confusing the browser's translation service with what eBay does to the auction *title*. There is no "enabling".  Ebay just attempts to translate foreign language auction titles on the default site (the American site in my case) and there is no way to turn eBay's behavior off.

[mudshark61369]

@dinkyman,

I guess I misunderstood what you were doing because you wrote "half of your purchases are foreign ones".

I think the only way we can even try to help would be to see an example of a "translated" item title, by posting its item number, and telling us what you were searching for and if you know how the proper title should appear, adding that too might help.  Have you tried a reverse Google translate, the English to (seller's language) of a poorly translated item title?  Maybe try another translation service to see what it does to the title.

The problem is, none of us on these boards has a direct line to anyone high enough up the ebay corporate ladder, to effect any change. Even the few ebay employees who can be contacted by us, have no power to effect changes.  Even if they can reach someone with the authority, the chances of ebay changing anything, are slim at best.