Google translate beta

[Keith Wilkinson]

http://translate.google.com/translate_t

[Chris Poole]

Has anyone ever seen this word before? Any ideas on meaning?

伏敵

Ta
Chris

[Hanae]

伏敵

Don't know what the "real" English word for it is, but it means
something like hidden enemy/enemies - whether skulking in the bushes or
posing as your allies.

Regards
Helen H

[Christopher Girsch]

Keith sent this.

I tried it.

昨日、友達とご飯を食べに行きました。

Yesterday, the friend and the boiled rice it went to eating.

Thanks for the good laugh.

Chris Girsch

>
>
>
>http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
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[Jason Buckley]

Quite a good sign that computers still aren't up to the mark.  I was speaking with my friend the other week about how I wanted to do translation in the future, and he tried to convince me that I'm wasting my time because computers already did it.  And even if they won't do it 100% right you'd just need an editor to finish off the final job.  I told him he didn't know what he was talking about.

This is my first post BTW.  よろしく

[Alan Siegrist]

Christopher Girsch writes:

> I tried it.
>
> 昨日、友達とご飯を食べに行きました。
>
> Yesterday, the friend and the boiled rice it went to eating.

I thought: "let's try to be a little nicer on the poor maligned machine
translation system" and supply the missing subject and make the sentence a
bit clearer (doing some pre-editing as they say). So I tried again:

| 昨日、私は友達と一緒にご飯を食べに行きました。
|
| Yesterday, I the boiled rice went to eating in the friend and
simultaneous.

Well, it looks like I have struck out in the pre-editing department...

Thanks again for the laugh.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Orinda, CA, USA
AlanFS...@Comcast.net

[Chris Poole]

People,
As usual it's poor source text that is to blame. Here, I'll show you

Chris got
昨日、私の友達と私は食事を食べに行きました。

Yesterday, the friend and the boiled rice it went to eating.

But if you try

昨日、私の友達及び私行きましたは食事を食べに。
Yesterday, my friend I the meal went to eating.

er, hang on

昨日、私の友達及び私は行きましたは食事を食べに。
Yesterday, my friend and me it went the meal in eating.

nope

昨日、食事を食べるために私の友達及び私は行きました。
Yesterday, my friend and I went the meal in eating.

um

昨日、ある食事を食べるために私の友達及び私は行きました。
Yesterday, my friend and I went in order to eat the meal.

getting close

昨日、食事を食べに私の友達及び私は行きました。
Yesterday, my friend and I went in order to eat a certain meal.

getting very warm

昨日、食事を食べに私の友達及び私は行きました。
Yesterday, the meal my friend and I went in eating.

oh, ah

昨日、食べるために私の友達及び私は行った食事。
Yesterday, in order to eat my friend and as for me the meal which goes.

whatever, I'm just not good enough for Google Translate

Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Girsch" <cpgi...@nifty.com>
To: <hon...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: Google translate beta

>
>
>
> Keith sent this.
>
> I tried it.
>
> 昨日、友達とご飯を食べに行きました。
>
> Yesterday, the friend and the boiled rice it went to eating.
>
> Thanks for the good laugh.
>
> Chris Girsch
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>>
>>
>>>>
>
>

> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~

> To post: mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe: mailto:honyaku-u...@googlegroups.com
> List home: http://groups.google.com/group/honyaku
> Posters assume all responsibility for their posts; list owners do not
> review messages and accept no responsibility for the content of posts.

> -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
>

[Brian Watson]

This reminds me of my very first experience using translation software, back in 1992.

I typed in: Time flies like an arrow.

And got:

時間の蠅が矢を好む。

On 7/4/07, Chris Poole <cpta...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

People,
As usual it's poor source text that is to blame. Here, I'll show you

--
Brian Watson
http://www.studiomomo.com
+1.604.395.4202 (home office), +1.425.246.7888 (cell), +1.425.484.6429 (fax)

[kanji saito]

和訳、英訳を繰り返したら、わやくちゃに。
とうとうアメリカまで行ってしまいました。

昨日、私は友達と一緒にご飯を食べに行きました。
↓
Yesterday, I the boiled rice went to eating in the friend and
simultaneous.

↓
昨日、iは友人で食べることに沸かされた米同時行き。
↓
Yesterday, as for i the American simultaneous going which is boiled in
eating with the friend.
↓
昨日、iに関しては友人と食べることで沸くアメリカに同時に行くこと。

[Anthony Bryant]

On Jul 4, 2007, at 7:05 PM, Chris Poole wrote:

>
> Has anyone ever seen this word before? Any ideas on meaning?
>
> 伏敵

Is there any context, or is it just a metal disk with two kanji?

Tony

[Alan Siegrist]

I wrote:

> | 昨日、私は友達と一緒にご飯を食べに行きました。
> |
> | Yesterday, I the boiled rice went to eating in the friend and
> simultaneous.
>
> Well, it looks like I have struck out in the pre-editing department...

Thinking that I could out-fox this machine translation system into giving us
something even half-baked, I thought, maybe I could type in what we want and
see if it would translate it into Japanese, which we could then feed back...

So I did:

| Yesterday, I went to eat dinner with my friend.
|
| 昨日、私は私の友人が付いている夕食を食べることを行った。

がっくり。にっこり。とうとう人食いになりました。

[Darren Cook]

>> 昨日、友達とご飯を食べに行きました。
>>
>> Yesterday, the friend and the boiled rice it went to eating.
>
> I thought: "let's try to be a little nicer on the poor maligned machine
> translation system" and supply the missing subject and make the sentence a
> bit clearer (doing some pre-editing as they say). So I tried again:
>
> | 昨日、私は友達と一緒にご飯を食べに行きました。
> |
> | Yesterday, I the boiled rice went to eating in the friend and
> simultaneous.

:-)

If it is statistically-based translation I guess it makes sense it
actually got worse with more information: being explicit is very rare in
real Japanese ;-).

Darren

[Steve Venti]

Jason Buckley wrote:
> Quite a good sign that computers still aren't up to the mark.

Nor will they ever be until someone is able to teach them how to write. <g>

--
Steve Venti

The source of all unhappiness is other people.
--Wally
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Jacob Dunlap]

A bit off topic, but I've always wondered if machine translation is
responsible for this:

http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order/

Machine translation may not be up to snuff, but machine comedy is
already incredibly advanced. ;)

Jacob Dunlap

[Alan Siegrist]

Helen Hanae ponders:

> 伏敵

Might the following be related to your query?

http://www.nishinippon.co.jp/news/wordbox/display/3158/

| 記章は縦約三センチ、横約二センチの金属製で、水牛の角をモチーフに
| した福岡藩主黒田長政の兜（かぶと）のデザイン。福岡市の筥崎宮に掲
| げられている「敵国降伏」を略した「伏敵」の文字が刻まれている。

If so, I think we can assume that 伏敵 is short for 敵国降伏, so it means
something like "force the enemy countries to surrender" or "pray for the
surrender of our enemies."

[Alex]

I tried working this thing backwards to see what the machine was
looking for from the very beginning, so I typed:

"Yesterday, I went to eat with my friend."

↓ Which resulted in...

"昨日、私は私の友人と食べることを行った。"

↓ Then I tried translating that back into English, expecting nearly
the exact same sentence as I originally typed, but was instead
given...

"Yesterday, I did my friend eating."

Oh my.

Alex

[Marc Adler]

Steve Venti wrote:

> Nor will they ever be until someone is able to teach them how to write. <g>

Oddly, they share that characteristic with many humans...

--
Marc Adler
Austin, TX

[Malcolm James]

Darren Cook wrote:

> If it is statistically-based translation I guess it makes sense it
> actually got worse with more information: being explicit is very rare in
> real Japanese ;-).

FWIW, I don't think Google has applied their own statistically-based
translation methods to J-E yet. The output is identical to that of the
venerable Babelfish, so I presume Google is still using Systran for J-E
translations.
http://world.altavista.com/tr

Malcolm
________________________________________________
Malcolm James
Fontaine Limited, Kyoto
Japanese to English translation by native speakers
web: http://www.translation.co.jp

----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Cook" <dar...@dcook.org>
To: <hon...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 9:13 AM
Subject: Re: Google translate beta

>

[Matt Stanton]

> Yesterday, the friend and the boiled rice it went to eating.

Forget teaching the program how to translate, they need to teach it
proper English grammar first. For one thing, the sentence has two
subjects ("the friend and the boiled rice" and "it"), and for another,
it should be "go to eat" not "go to eating." Astonishing.

Matt

[Matt Stanton]

But that sentence is a little complex, so let's be kind and give it
something easy to translate:

暑いですね。
Being hot, the shank.

[Marc Adler]

Jacob Dunlap wrote:

Here's another example that's pretty funny.

http://middlekingdomstories.blog-city.com/crazy_subtitles_war_of_the_worlds.htm