On 03/30/2011 01:17 PM, Beau R Beck wrote:
> Thank you for your helpful and timely responses, and for the
> links. I have only just glanced at them, but I look forward to looking
> over them more thoroughly in the very near future. A Latin to English
> translator would be more useful; however, I thought it would be more
> difficult. That is why i picked English to Latin. I would be more than
> willing to work on Latin to English.
> I want to work on this particular language because I feel that all
> the translators I've used have had limitations in some way, mostly to do
> with translating the different declensions and cases correctly. For
> instance, with the Google translator, when i put "currit in cauponam" it
> output "the inn is running in the." This doesn't make sense, and I
> would have translated it "he/she/it is running into the in." Another
> example is "currit in cauponā." it output "is running in the in." This
> is almost correct, the translator just didn't get the subject from the
> verb.
As someone with a lot of experience in Latin, getting the subject
right is one of the most difficult things even for humans. The
subject is often omitted, in which case it can often be difficult
even to determine which antecedent is to serve. Then there are those
neuter nouns, almost all of which are identical in the nominative
and accusative, so it can be difficult to tell whether the noun is
the subject or direct object of the verb.
> One more example is that most translators also incorrectly
> translate the ablative case when it's all alone as the instrument of
> means (eg. baculō would mean to do something with a stick). These are
> just a few examples of the limitations they have.
There are many different ablative constructions, of which ablative
of means is only one. You also have time when, comparison, etc. which
require either context or semantic knowledge to disambiguate. Some
verbs even take their direct objects in the ablative. Not to mention
that all nouns are the same in the dative and ablative plural, and most
of them are the same in the singular, so baculō above could also be a
dative singular.
--Mark
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