I can see the utility, from a computing perspective, of offering a
menu of the possible word and phrase translations recognized by Google
Translate. This way we can connect specific parts of a corrected
translation to their incorrectly machine-translated counterparts.
The problem is that often, Google Translate incorrectly parses
phrases, clauses, even compound verbs in the original text, and you
are left with a bunch of translated words which have been arranged in
the wrong order in the results box. You can correct the heck out of
them, but they won't make a coherent whole because the order is wrong.
Two things would help:
1) Being able to drag-and-drop words in the results box, to rearrange
them in logical relation to eachother
2) Being able to highlight and click on any word combinations at will,
and bring up a menu like Google Translate does now for words of its
own choosing.
FOR EXAMPLE (French)
Right now, given the original text
Elle est une éleveuse anglaise de repute.
Google Translate yields
She is an English breeder reputation.
Here's the mapping revealed by hovering on the translated words:
Elle=she, est=is, une=an, anglaise=English, éleveuse=breeder, de
repute=reputation.
All correct and arranged grammatically, except for the bad translation
of "de repute".
It can be changed into an acceptable translation by clicking on
"reputation", and editing it to map the phrase "of renown" to the
French phrase "de repute":
She is an English breeder of renown.
But a better translation would be
She is a renowned English breeder.
...which COULD be created by dragging "reputation" to a position
between "an" and "breeder", and then editing it to map the word
"renowned" to "de repute".
That was a straightforward one, where Google Translate identified the
sentence structure correctly but it still would have been nice to
rearrange things.
But how about this example
Original text
Il a mal enherbé la gazon.
It should translate as:
He sowed the lawn poorly.
With a mapping
Il=he, a=has, mal=poorly, enherbé=sowed, la=the, gazon=lawn.
or even better, with
"a enherbé"= sowed
But Google's machine translation is:
He hurt the grassy lawn.
With a totally insane mapping
Il a=he ( ?? ), mal=hurt (a noun, not an adverb; positioned as if it
was a verb!), la=the, enherbé=grassy(an adjective, not a verb!),
gazon=lawn.
Changing words by clicking on them can only get you so far:
He poorly the sowed lawn
Which also leaves "Il a" incorrectly mapped to "He" - the meaning of
"a" as part of the past participle is lost.
But if we could rearrange the words:
He grassy the lawn poorly
And then highlight "He grassy" ( mapped to Il a, enherbé ) and change
it, all together, to "He sowed":
He sowed the lawn poorly
With a mapping
Il a enherbé= he sowed, mal=poorly, la=the, gazon=lawn ... neat and
logical, and useful for future translations!
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