I am well aware that online translators can fail on even fairly simple translations, but one specific issue has me wondering if there is an aspect of French that I am not understanding.
Most online translators translate the English sentence "I have not spoken French for 30 years." to:
"Je n'ai pas parlé français depuis 30 ans."
That's fine. However, to my surprise Google Translate translates that sentence to
"Je ne parle pas français depuis 30 ans."
And if I replace "French" with "English" or "Basque" or "Hebrew" or "Yiddish" in the English sentence it performs a similar translation.
But if I use "Spanish" in the English sentence it is translated to:
"Je n'ai pas parlé espagnol depuis 30 ans."
I'd expect a sentence of that form regardless of the specific language, and similar translations are done if I replace "Spanish" with "Italian" or "Arabic" or "Flemish" or "Hindi" in the English sentence to be translated.
So is Google Translate correctly handling some nuance in the French language that appears to treat some languages (French, English, Basque, Hebrew, Yiddish) differently to the others? More directly, does this sentence make sense in French?..
"Je ne parle pas français depuis 30 ans."
If not, it seems very strange that Google Translate would provide incorrect translations inconsistently, depending on the language specified in the English sentence.