Hello, I am hoping one of the Google Translate developers could have a look at this...
As someone who makes use of the Google Translate function "Macedonian > English Translation" I find that there is a serious shortcoming. In many instances, there are web pages written where the appropriate "translate from" option would be Macedonian, but they are written in Latin characters. I am aware that Cyrillic is the predominant and more correct character set to use in Macedonian, but many in cyberspace informally use Latin equivalents. This is particularly true with things like emails and blog posts. For example the word for hello is written "здраво" in Cyrillic but often written using the Latin equivalent "zdravo." Unfortunately when Google Translate encounters "zdravo" using "Macedonian > English Translation" it only outputs "zdravo" instead of hello. Interestingly, if the same test is made using "Serbian > English Translation," this is not a problem, both Cyrillic and Latin characters are accepted and in both cases "hello" is the output. I realize that the different treatment in Serbian vs. Macedonian may be due to differences in official standards regarding character sets, but as a practical matter, there are many, many instances of Macedonian being written using Latin characters, and I would expect that the use of Latin characters will only expand as time goes on. If Google would consider making "Macedonian > English Translation" behave more like "Serbian > English Translation" in recognizing and processing Latin characters, I think it would be a very useful improvement. Thank you very much. -Bob ***To those reading this post, please do NOT raise issues regarding the name of the language "Macedonian," which is what Google calls it. If you do not like Google's nomenclature, please use other threads to make your opinion known to Google; it would not be relevant here. Thank you. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
