"Amusing" for you, perhaps, but essential cross-cultural understanding for me, Steve. Sometimes, our US-centric orientation is unseemly.
--- On Mon, 12/7/09, Steve at Verizon <[email protected]> wrote: From: Steve at Verizon <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [CGUYS] Google Language Tools [was: Server restrictions] To: [email protected] Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 12:27 PM A good test of machine translation is to translate and then translate back to the original language. This can also be highly amusing. Rev. Stewart Marshall wrote: > Betty translation sites lack the human factor. > > I recently did a English to German translation for a prayer. The result was > acceptable but not great. > > I also had my mother translate it for me. They were different. > > One of things that the translation cannot do it substitute idiom and phrasing > for things like this. > > It may be an exact translation, but it does not sound right to the person of > that language as they would not say it correctly. > > Example. English - Shut the window please. German - Bitte schleissen dem > fenster. > > That is a correct translation however a German would never say it that way. > > Correct German translation - Macht die fenster zu bitte. Make the window > too please! Sounds awful in English but it is a proper translation again. > > All languages have their idiomatic phrases that are part of learning that > language and makes you speak more like a native. > > Stewart > > At 10:48 PM 12/6/2009, you wrote: >> I had a guest from Thailand staying with us last week. Her English is very >> good, but there are many words she doesn't know. I asked her if she wanted >> pistachio ice cream for dessert. Then I went to Google's language tools and >> translated it into Thai and showed it to her. She laughed. It was >> "pistachio" spelled phonetically using the Thai alphabet. We looked for a >> photograph that she recognized, the she told me that in Thai [translated >> again] it's called a "smiling nut". >> >> I can forgive its mistakes in Thai, but it really should translate Spanish >> <--> English better than it does. Surprisingly the Greek <--> English is >> better. It's also handy in translating Russian, since I don't have the >> alphabet memorized well enough to use a dictionary. >> >> Betty > > Rev. Stewart A. Marshall > mailto:[email protected] > Prince of Peace www.princeofpeaceozark.org > Ozark, AL SL 82 > > > ************************************************************************* > ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** > ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** > ************************************************************************* > ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** ************************************************************************* ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
