Google translator
Athel Cornish-Bowden
have strong views about the quality of translations produced by Google
translate (http://translate.google.com/translate_t)?
I have been testing it with FR->EN and ES->EN, and finding the results
better than I expected. The English text that emerges is almost always
intelligible, and a lot better than machine translation used to be in
the past. Checking in the opposite direction also seems to be OK,
though I'm less competent to judge that.
--
athel
Tony Vella
news:6mokddF...@mid.individual.net...
Hello Athel.
A local friend of mine was recently playing around with the different
"translation machines" out there. What she was doing was reverse
translation (e.g. English to Spanish and then the resulting Spanish back to
English) and judging accuracy by how close the translated English came to
the original. She tells me that Google was the best of a bad lot.
Both my friend and I are stamp collectors (and swappers) and at times we
must rely on machine translations, lately Google. She did not have any
problems with some contact in Brazil and I got along fine with Romanian and
Dutch collectors. But, as you can guess, it's not exactly translating law
and medicine; it's translating silly stuff like:
Thank you very much for the stamps you sent me; they arrived this morning.
I shall be sending you some Canadian stamps next week - they were all issued
before 1950. ===
Va multumesc foarte mult pentru tine mi-a trimis timbre; au sosit īn aceasta
dimineata. I se sa va trimita niste timbre canadian saptamāna viitoare -
toate acestea au fost emise īnainte de 1950. === Hartelijk dank voor de
stempels die u stuurde me, ze is vanochtend gearriveerd. Ik zal het sturen
van een aantal Canadese postzegels van volgende week - ze werden alle
uitgegeven vóór 1950.
Never anything more complicated than that. Hope this helps.
Incidentally, if there is anyone out there familiar with Russian (I don't
know a single word) I would like to exchange a couple of emails just for the
fun of it.
--
Tony Vella
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
http://www.amedialuz.ca/
Pierre Jelenc
J'ai fait des tests avec FR-> EN et ES-> EN, et de trouver les
résultats mieux que prévu. Le texte anglais qui se dégage est
presque toujours intelligible, et beaucoup mieux que la traduction
automatique pour être utilisé dans le passé. Vérification dans le
sens inverse semble également être OK, si je suis moins compétente
que pour juger.
It's OK for a machine. One can get the meaning, especially if one can
compare with the original.
Jag har test den med FR-> SV och ES-> EN, och att finna resultat
bättre än jag förväntade mig. Den engelska texten som framträder
är nästan alltid begripliga, och mycket bättre än
maskinöversättning brukade vara i tidigare. Kontrollera i motsatt
riktning också verkar vara OK, Men jag är mindre kompetent att
bedöma det.
An interesting error common to the French and Swedish version, which
I thought pointed to an erroneous parsing of the English "and finding the
results" which was not understood as standing for "and I have been finding
the results". For fun I tried Norwegian (which I don't really know but can
read more or less):
Jeg har vært å teste den med FR-> EN og ES-> EN, og finne de
resultatene bedre enn jeg forventet. Den engelske teksten som
avtegner seg er nesten alltid forståelig, og mye bedre enn
maskinen oversettelse pleide å være i tidligere. Sjekke i motsatt
retning ser også ut til å være OK, selv om jeg er mindre kompetent
til å bed¢mme det.
Here, the translation of that fragment is essentially correct! So it's not
the parsing of the original that's at fault. Weird.
Swedish "men" translates "though" better than French "si" (in this
context), and Norwegian "om" feels half-way in between (but the "selv"
seems oddly placed ... again I don't really know Norwegian.)
Overall, I'm rather impressed.
Pierre
--
Pierre Jelenc
The Gigometer www.web-ho.com/gigs.html
The NYC Beer Guide www.nycbeer.org
Afoklala
> "Athel Cornish-Bowden" <athe...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:6mokddF...@mid.individual.net...
>> Does anyone (preferably someone whose native language is not English) have
>> strong views about the quality of translations produced by Google
>> translate (http://translate.google.com/translate_t)?
>>
> A local friend of mine was recently playing around with the different
> "translation machines" out there. What she was doing was reverse
> translation (e.g. English to Spanish and then the resulting Spanish back to
> English) and judging accuracy by how close the translated English came to
> the original. She tells me that Google was the best of a bad lot.
>
> Both my friend and I are stamp collectors (and swappers) and at times we
> must rely on machine translations, lately Google. She did not have any
> problems with some contact in Brazil and I got along fine with Romanian and
> Dutch collectors. But, as you can guess, it's not exactly translating law
> and medicine; it's translating silly stuff like:
>
> Thank you very much for the stamps you sent me; they arrived this morning.
> I shall be sending you some Canadian stamps next week - they were all issued
> before 1950. ===
> Hartelijk dank voor de
> stempels die u stuurde me, ze is vanochtend gearriveerd. Ik zal het sturen
> van een aantal Canadese postzegels van volgende week - ze werden alle
> uitgegeven vССr 1950.
I'm Dutch, so I can say something about this last bit. It is
comprehensible, but not grammatically correct Dutch. It contains one
serious mistake, when it translates 'stamps' as 'stempels'. A 'stempel' is
not a stamp, but the ink thing that is stamped ON the stamp to show that it
has been used. Very odd is that it makes this mistake only once, the second
occurrence of 'stamps' is translated correctly!
Here's an attempt at back-translation:
Thank you very much for the ink-stamps send you me, she has arrived this
morning. I shall the sending of a number of Canadian stamps of next week -
they were all of them issued before 1950.
My opinion: useable for simple everyday common messages. But don't use it
for your international sales website.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
In good writing, for good reasons, under normal circumstances, whenever you
can, use prepositional phrases in limited numbers and with great caution.
Tony Vella
news:1efyehd6pce8x.1tvblbzpls1l4$.dlg@40tude.net...
Hello Jan
I shall never use Google in my sales websites for the simple reason that I
am a fanatical collector - I always buy and never sell (as my wife reminds
me at every opportunity).
Ik zal nooit gebruik maken van Google in mijn verkoop websites om de
eenvoudige reden dat ik ben een fanatiek verzamelaar - Ik heb altijd kopen
en verkopen nooit (zoals mijn vrouw doet me denken bij elke gelegenheid).
One must admit that for such silliness Google translation is more than good
enough. The worst that can happen in my case is some misunderstanding as to
who is sending what to whom and when. For more important stuff than this I
for one would never recommend its use.
Athel Cornish-Bowden
OK, thanks to you and the others who responded.
Putting my query in context, I learned a few days ago that with very
simple code one can add a line to the HTML for any web page that
instals a link that will automatically translate the text to any of
about 20 languages. For my main pages I put them into French and
Spanish myself (and get the results checked by my daughter, who is for
practical purposes a native speaker of all three), but I don't have the
time or energy to do this for all of them, and even with unlimited time
and energy I wouldn't have the ability to offer pages in Hindi or
Greek, so I was wondering if the people who pressed the Hindi or Greek
buttons would be served up with unintelligible garbage.
--
athel
Afoklala
> Putting my query in context, I learned a few days ago that with very
> simple code one can add a line to the HTML for any web page that
> instals a link that will automatically translate the text to any of
> about 20 languages. For my main pages I put them into French and
> Spanish myself (and get the results checked by my daughter, who is for
> practical purposes a native speaker of all three), but I don't have the
> time or energy to do this for all of them, and even with unlimited time
> and energy I wouldn't have the ability to offer pages in Hindi or
> Greek, so I was wondering if the people who pressed the Hindi or Greek
> buttons would be served up with unintelligible garbage.
Well, as I said, it won't be unintelligible (in fact, the meaning will
probably get across just fine), but it will look quite amateurish,
especially because of the rather serious grammar and word order issues.
I don't know if your website is just some personal pages, in which case you
might go this road; but if you are indeed selling something, or even want
to come across as a serious source of information, you might not.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
Here's to your coffin...
May it be built of 100 year old oaks which I will plant tomorrow.
Afoklala
:-) With the word 'you', I didn't you personally. It was meant as a generic
you, meaning 'anybody'.
> Ik zal nooit gebruik maken van Google in mijn verkoop websites om de
> eenvoudige reden dat ik ben een fanatiek verzamelaar - Ik heb altijd kopen
> en verkopen nooit (zoals mijn vrouw doet me denken bij elke gelegenheid).
>
I will never use Google in my sales and websites for the simple reason that
I a fanatic collector am / I have always buy and sell never (as my wife
does me think at every opportunity).
Yeah, errors mainly in grammar and word order, but all the essentials are
there. It's better than I thought it would.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.