James Casson said he relied on "a Maori woman" in his office for a te reo translation on his candidate profile.

Hamilton mayoral candidate James Casson's bid to appeal to Maori voters backfired when he used Google Translate to get his message across in te reo.

Casson's​ candidate profile, which arrived in letter boxes throughout the city this week, included a hopelessly bungled bio about the former policeman. Instead of endearing himself to Maori voters Casson's pamphlet has raised eyebrows in the Maori speaking community for all of the wrong reasons.

It's an unintelligible jumble of words and phrases which Waikato University language expert Tom Roa said is "very, very, very poor".

"It actually turns me off because it looks like somebody has just jumbled a whole lot of phrases inaccurately together and it doesn't give a very good portrait of the person it is supposed to be supporting," Roa said.

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Te Taka Keegan, a Waikato University senior computer science lecturer who worked on Google Translate, said the gobbledygook is a misuse of the translation tool.

"The gibberish that is written in the second part of this bio is barely recognisable as te reo Maori, it is disrespectful to the Maori language," Keegan said.

Casson said he was unaware of how his profile was translated. He gave his English version to a "Maori woman" at his office to get it done.

"She had a look at it and said, yeah, it sounds alright," Casson said.

But when Stuff copied the English language profile and pasted it into Google Translate the result was a word-for-word, error-ridden version of the official Hamilton City Council version apart from a few sentences Casson had deleted due to word limit.

And the translation makes for interesting reading.

It is missing prepositions, articles and connecting words - words like 'the', 'an' and 'is' in the English language.

North Hamilton is translated to 'Te Tai Tokerau Kirikiriroa'.

Kirikiriroa is Hamilton. Te Tai Tokerau is the Far North of New Zealand.

There are also words that don't exist in te reo Maori like 'faitotonu' and 'aufau'. The letter 'f' is not used in te reo Maori.

​Google translates those two words to mean 'honest' and 'pay' but they are not found on the online Maori Dictionary.

Casson was apologetic when alerted to the errors but there is no going back. The pamphlets are published and being sent to every house in Hamilton.

He is not Maori nor does he speak Maori.

"That's a bit unfortunate but I can't change it now. If I had known, I would have changed it before that," he said.