The use of the past active participle to render the English past active is to be expected: it’s the standard/most common way to render the past tense in modern/spoken Sanskrit as taught eg by Samskrta Bharati, and I assume that that’s the sort of Sanskrit that ChatGPT is trained on. Not applying external sandhi also is not uncommon in modern Sanskrit, at least as used by those who aren’t complete masters of the language the way eg Madhav is. 

Antonia 

On Mon 27 Nov 2023 at 23:29, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Madhav wrote:
I hear that students are already beginning to use Google-Translator to do their Sanskrit homework.

I just did a little experiment.  Taking a few of the english translations in Apte's  "The Student's Guide to Sanskrit Composition" and comparing what Google Translator gave as a sanskrit translation of these, and comparing to the original sanskrit quotes .  A couple of surprising things stood out.  Surprising because these are fundamental things nothing subtle.  Google translator seems to use sanskrit past active participle to translate english simple past.  It doesn't seem to apply visarga sandhi, a completely mechanical process.

In these examples, the yellow highlighted sanskrit is the citation from Apte, the blue highlighted sanskrit is the google sanskrit translation of Apte's english translation given below.

 Rama saw govinda

rāmo govindamapaśyat

rāmaḥ govindaṁ dṛṣṭavān


I Salute the parents of the universe, Parvati and Paramesvara.

jagataḥ pitarau vande pārvatīparameśvarau

viśvasya mātāpitarau pārvatīṁ parameśvaraṁ ca namāmi


He washed his hands and feet.

hastau pādau cākṣālayat

saḥ hastapādau prakṣālitavān।


She shut her eyes

sā locane nyamīlayat |

sā netrāṇi nimīlitavatī


So says the revered Shankara

iti śrīśaṁkārācāryāḥ |

tathā vadati pūjyaḥ śaṅkaraḥ।


Thou art, therefore, a friend.

tasmāt sakhā tvam asi

tena tvaṁ mitram asi


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