Which reading does Google Translate use for kanji words?

Question

I used a web service to emulate the name "Siavosh" in Kanji. First, you select your name parts from a table of kana and then it gives you a combination of kanji with pronunciation of each kanji superscripted above it. So far everything seems fine, and "Siavosh" is kanjified as below:

煮武瀬

Therefore, considering the above is correct, the resulted kanji would make an estimated equivalent of "Siavosh" as "Syabuse". But, wait a minute, when I type the kanji word in Google Translate, it reads completely different. Are we both right? Am I wrong or is Google? Or even worse, are we both wrong?!

Answer 1

Since you have used that site, you probably have noticed that there are dozens of kanji that can be read the same way. For example, 者, 社, 車, 斜, 謝 and many others can be read "sha". But did you know most kanji have two or more readings? 煮 can be read both "ni" and "sha"; 武 is "bu", "mu", "take" or "takeshi"; 瀬 is "se" or "rai". Therefore, even native Japanese speakers cannot determine the reading of 煮武瀬 in one way. Some may well read it as "nitakerai" or "nimuse".

Ultimately, Japanese kanji is unsuitable for this purpose. Many people ask here "How do you write <my name> in kanji?", but such a question is already pointless. Although "kanjification" looks appealing to some Western people, it's nothing more than a wordplay, and you cannot expect Japanese speakers read or understand it. Practically, western names have to be written not in kanji but in katakana, which is a phonetic alphabet in the Japanese language. Katakana has its own limitation, but it's generally much better at consistently representing the sound of a foreign word.