I said nothing about English being one of the languages.
chad evans wyatt wrote:
"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
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