Job Discussion Forums

Kent F. Kruhoeffer · Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 2129 Location: 中国

It's easy to find online dictionaries these days ...

a bit harder to find decent free software that will translate

text from one language into another and then back again.

Google.com is developing such a page, and I found it VERY useful

last night when trying to translate an Italian sentence into English.

Non parlo una parola di italiano.

At the moment, you can translate the following 7 languages, all

from one simple interface located here: Google Language Tools

Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Chinese

It seems to work OK, although I'm only able

to judge the English-German translations.

I was hoping those of you who are fluent in other languages

might give it a short test-drive and let me know what you think?

Thailand teaching and travel resources available here :::: The Master Index Thailand ::::

Mira · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Raleigh, NC

I took the tool for a short test drive, translating from English into French. For the most part, it provided a spot-on translation. However for one sentence, it provided a word-for-word translation instead of capturing the essence of the sentence and translating it into proper French. For example, when I asked it to translate 'what is your name?', it gave me 'ce qui est votre nom', not exactly textbook French but probably good enough to get your point across.

As a side note, I've been using http://www.rustran.com/ to do English to Russian and Russian to English translations and found it to be incredibly useful and best of all, free.

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

For a long time I've been looking for a decent English-Turkish/turkish-english thingy(free of course) As I can't find one.... I just go down the pub.

And thank God there isn't any decent software out there or I'd be out of a job.

acwilliams · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 5:23 am Post subject:

Hi, just tried it out with Chinese and checked the result with a Chinese speaker. It coped fine with "Hello Li Lin, I'm trying out 'Google Language Tools, a web page that can translate English into Chinese. Does it work? Can you understand this paragraph?" But it translated "Is it good Chinese?" as "It is Chinese person good?" - adding "ren" (person) all by itself! "Thank you for your help!" was fine. "Love, Amie, xxxx" came out as gobbledygook. Li Lin wasn't very impressed.

sonya · Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 51 Location: california

The Chinese.. you lose some nuances, but it worked for the few simple sentences I tried. In French it's a little off too. Basically it translates word for word and tries to fit these words into the a set syntax.. but.. oftentimes things in English aren't expressed the same way in another language. I don't know, I use the translator thing on Safari (I meant Sherlock) sometimes to look up inflections in French.. but that's it..

What do you like to do? in the Chinese translates as, "Do you "xiang" do something?". Xiang means to want, to miss, to think of, etc., it's not quite the same as like, which is xihuan.

In the French it translates as Que aimez-vous faire? Which sounds good to me.

Would you like a cup of tea? in the Chinese translates as, "Do you want a glass of tea?" There's no direct way to translate "would" or anything in the conditional tense, but a human translator would do it as, "You want not want a glass of tea?"

In the French it translates as "Vous aiment une tasse de th�? " which is totally off. The verb form is wrong, the tense is wrong, and normally for this tone you would use inversion.. the correct form would be, "Voudriez-vous une tasse de th�?" or "Aimeriez-vous une tasse de th�?" But still, a French speaker would understand the google translation.

Kent F. Kruhoeffer · Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 2129 Location: 中国

^ Thanks for your input !

I'm not buying stock in it yet.

спасибо Mira, for the link to Rustran.

I've added it to The Master Index Russia.

Thailand teaching and travel resources available here :::: The Master Index Thailand ::::

gaijinalways · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 2279

You might want to try 'babelfish' also. I have used this when contacting others in German and French, gets the point across, though sometimes you have to translate phrases rather than sentences.

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

The Google Language Tool makes the same mistakes my Mexican students make! Too many 'to's and it mangles pronouns.

mondrian · Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:06 am Post subject:

Perpetual Traveller · Joined: 29 Aug 2005 Posts: 651 Location: In the Kak, Japan

Another one to try is Free Translation it's not brilliant by any means but if one of the others is failing you it might be worth looking there too. Seems they all make similar mistakes, trying to translate word for word rather than getting the essence of the sentence but still, what more do you want for free I guess. Wink

PT

Kent F. Kruhoeffer · Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 2129 Location: 中国

^ Thanks for the additional feedback, you guys!

And thanks PT; that one also translates Russian,

and passed my test sentence with flying colours:

. . . Я люблю холодное пиво.

. . . . . . . . . . . I give it a

.

Thailand teaching and travel resources available here :::: The Master Index Thailand ::::

Mira · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Raleigh, NC

Any tool that can properly translate 'I like cold beer' gets a thumbs-up from me, too!