On Nov 26, 10:09 am, Harald Korneliussen wrote:
> On Nov 26, 8:43 am, Ron Barak wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi,
>
> > Following is a suggestion for anewfeaturefor Google Translate
> > (GT):
> > have a"translateback"keythat will put the translated section in
> > the translation window, will swap the languages, and will then perform
> > a translation.
>
> > Rational:
> > I find GT invaluable, especially when dealing with Korean/Chinese
> > speakers, who sometime do not sufficiently master the English
> > language.
> > However, since I read neither Korean nor Chinese, the way I check that
> > the automatic translation GT provide is adequate is to do a "back
> > translation", namely - I translate the GT translation back to the
> > original language and see if what is produced is close to my original.
> > I suggest that GT allows one to automate this process with the
> > suggested"translateback"key.
>
> Yes, this would be useful. But I think what you really want, is some
> measure of the quality of the translation: approximately how much
> information is lost, and which words were left untranslated (back
> translation won't reveal the latter). One suggestion would be to
> encode this in the text.
>
> Example: In modern bibles and other translations of ancient texts,
> they will often use italics or square brackets to denote words that
> are missing in the original text, and have been inferred, typically
> prepositions or articles. While this might clutter the output somewhat
> for quick and dirty translations, it would be very valuable for those
> who use the translator with a little more care.
>
> Or there could be colour-coding to show how certain the translator was
> about each word.
>
> Or, when you suggest a better translation for a given word, sentence
> part or sentence, the text could be retranslated with everything your
> didn't correct inferred as the most likely translation, given your
> suggestion.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
The problem I see with your suggestion is that almost any sentence,
and more so a word without context, could be validly translated in
more than one way, and all translations would probably have very high
certainty by the automatic translator.
Only when trying to translate back, the discrepancies would be
revealed.
However, human readers would have no problem determining if the
original text and the "back translated" text convey the same meaning
(even if in different words) or not.
