I would imagine that translating this kind of scrappy text is quite hard for a computer, but google make a reasonable fist of it, with the result being comprehensible if not very good English. And if one has to make a choice, comprehensibility will usually be more important than elegance.
The first error is the word genus, where the computer, for some reason, has picked on the taxonomic use of the word family rather than the more usual one. Which I find rather odd.
The second is the phrase 'director of postal Rotterdam' for which we might use 'postmaster for Rotterdam' or 'director general of the Rotterdam postal service'. Less bothered by this error as I think it is more a matter of choice and resources, whether one bothers to look up the right expression in the target language. No general rule is going to give you the right answer. That said, I have no idea whether we still have postmasters. Once important and respected people on the local scene, perhaps now swept away in some now forgotten reorganisation. Do you ask the computer to give you the term that was correct at the time or the term which would be correct now? Can you expect it to do anything much if the organisation of the Netherlands Postal Service bears no resemblance to that of our own? Or to that of the US Postal Service if your target audience is more US than UK flavoured?
The third is occurring the navy, rather than joining, enlisting or being commissioned into the navy. Perhaps the Dutch words for these things have an occurring flavour which ours do not. On postal grounds, I allow 'lieutenant-at-sea'; that is to say it is quite possible that omitting the at sea bit would be confusing in the context of the Dutch navy.
But 'rear-nacht' for rear admiral is odd, given that google gets vice admiral right.
The 'took some time commanded' for 'for some time commanded' is presumably the literal rendering of the Dutch.
But the closing 'in 1900 Paul Kruger at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands moved to the Netherlands to look at the course of events in South Africa await. To Baron Swerts was as commander of the Protected cruiser Gelderland instructed to sail on the presidential to the Netherlands. For the execution of this contract he received from the Dutch government a vindication of special appreciation and satisfaction' is a bit of a mess, although to be fair to google, if you mouse over it in the right way, you are invited to contribute a better translation of the Dutch which it supplies for you.
Which I in fact did for the some time commanded above, although when it came to it, I was not sure that the English supplied had not lost something from the Dutch which I was missing. Was the substitution of 'for' for 'took' good enough? Was the Tromp was the flagship of the Java fleet? The suggestion just vanished into the ether so I now wonder whether there will there be any repercussions, or does the suggestion just vanish into the statistical maw of the google translation service.
The 'await' bit is, I suppose, a relic of Dutch word order, which I imagine, like German, likes to put the verb at the end.
I wonder if they poke around in this sort of thing in schools, as an alternative to teaching people to speak and read foreign languages, something that we English are said to be bad at these days. Not like the days when bored army colonels posted out to somewhere in the wilds of India used to become world masters of ancient Indian languages and to correspond with Sir Richard Burton on the subject.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/och.html.
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