if i use google translate tools to translate a 'chinese article' (from a chinese blog etc) into english, is it considered unique or duplicate content?
Very good question! When talking about having a website translated in various languages covering the same info we have to say that this should not worry the site owners at all. Languages have different nuances, if I can put it that way, and it is not possible from a technological point of view for the bots to crawl the content and then translate it to check whether it is duplicate or not. Let's say that you have a paragraph written in Spanish and then you get it translated to an English version. Knowing that I think that it would not make any kind of sense for search engines to penalize websites for the translated content, because a particular translation appeals to a particular language group. I would also like to hear other opinions on this question. I don't say the one I've just shared is the correct answer, it's just a plausible explanation. If someone happens to know something that will shed more light on this it will be greatly appreciated by me and the DP members.
I do not think this would be considered duplicate content because when it's written in Chinese it's written with characters and when it's written in English it's written with letters. The question is can the search engine algorithm tell that it's the same article?
Google is a processing monster, but I think with this question you are overrating their processing power by a longshot.
At least at this moment translated content is not a problem. May be a problem after 5 years or 10 years when technology advances more. But you need to be aware of copyright issues of using translated materials for commercial purposes.