Interesting indeed. My mind is wandering here a little. In a
television program I saw some pictures of Riyadh airport and there are
bilingual signs to "Ground Transportation". According to Microsoft
(Google in point of fact gets this right) white dwarf stars are size
ground, whatever that might mean. Correct is the size of the Earth.
Now Google is aiming to provide a service that searches for
restaurants etc. that are near you. Are there any plans to modify
translations on mobile devices according to where you are. Suppose I
was using a mobile phone in Riyadh airport. Would translations be
changed for this reason? After all your position is as much an LSA
position as the words in a paragraph.
As I said earlier Irish Gaelic translations are political, and the
exact words of one anthem apparently go into the words of another.
- Ian Parker
On Jan 11, 8:58 am, Pertinax wrote:
> Here's an interesting thing.
> I just picked up the Irish lyrics from Wikipedia and put them into GT.
>
> If you format the song as a paragraph of text, eg "Sinne Fianna Fáil,
> atá faoi gheall ag Éirinn. Buíon dár slua thar toinn do áinig
> chughainn. Faoi mhóid bheith saor. Seantír ár sinsear feasta. Ní
> fhágfar faoin tíorán ná faoin tráill. Anocht a théam sa bhearna baoil,
> le gean ar Ghaeil, chun báis nó saoil. Le gunna scréach faoi lámhach
> na bpiléar. Seo libh canaig amhrán na bhFiann."
>
> I get "We Fianna Fáil, which are due at Ireland. Toinn group over to
> our host áinig us. About mhóid be free. Seantír future of our
> ancestors. Fhágfar under tíorán is not under tráill. Théam a gap
> tonight in risk, with gean on Ghaeil, to death or life. With rifle
> shooting scréach under the bpiléar. Here you canaig the Queen song."
>
> But formatting the lyrics as text, the translation comes out
> differently.
>
> "We Fianna Fáil,
> which are due by Ireland,
> Group of our crowd
> toinn for us over ráinig,
> About mhóid be free
> Seantír future of our ancestors,
> Fhágfar under tíorán is not under tráill.
> Théam tonight in a gap risk,
> Le gean on Ghaeil, to death or life,
> With rifle shooting scréach under the bpiléar,
> Here you canaig the Queen song"
>
> It's still not very good, but there's no "God Save the Queen".
>
> On Jan 10, 7:24 pm, Harald Korneliussen wrote:
>
>
>
> > 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.
