On Jan 10, 7:15 pm, Seán Ó Briain wrote:
> As it so happens, I'm a computer programmer - currently studying an
> honours degree in multimedia application development. My final year
> project is an Irish language learning tool, with which I have made use
> of Google's Translate API, and have had to write up a number of regex
> functions to correct important mistranslations.
If you do what it sounds like you are doing, it's very silly! For the
first, Google translate is not _stable_ - there's no guarantee that
the translation isn't completely different tomorrow. For the second,
you should see the futility of the task, keeping (and keeping updated)
a huge list of corrections - and in unmaintainable regexp form as
well! I suggest you Google the phrase "Now you have two problems", if
you haven't heard it.
There are good reasons why the "contribute a better translation" is
there even if they don't use every good suggestion that comes through
it. But here's a tip for you: In the updated FAQ, they say explicitly
that translations learned in the translate _toolkit_ are used. So, use
it (translate.google.com/toolkit) to provide an accurate English
translation of a page containing the Irish National Anthem, and I
guess it won't last long.
The toolkit is geared toward professional translators, or at least
people who have as aim producing a translation for someone else. The
regular translate box is geared towards people who just want to
understand (a bit more of) what they're looking at. You can bet
contributions in the former are a lot better on average - and that
Google pays more attention to them is also a safe bet.
