Hi João,
A similar thing happens in Spanish with the verb 'coger' - in Spain it
means 'to catch' but in Latin America it means 'to have sex with' -
so you do not ask if you can 'coger el autobus' in Mexico.
Translating from Portuguese into English is less of a problem, as it
recognises national variations, eg: the European 'estou a fazer' is
translated into English correctly as 'I'm doing' (like the Brazilian
'estou fazendo') not as 'I am to do'.
However, when I tried translating the European Portuguese sentence
'dar-lho-ei' ('I will give it to him') and it came out as 'I will give
it to them', although I could change it to 'him', 'her' or 'you
(formal)'. 'I will give it to them'. (Some people use 'them' as a
neuter singular pronoun in English, so that's where the confusion
comes from.)
When I translated 'I will give it to him' into Portuguese, it came out
as 'vou dar a ele' which is more Brazilian-sounding, and not even
correct - it means 'I am going to give him'. I think you would say in
Brazilian Portuguese 'vou dá-lo a ele' or 'vou dar isso a ele'. Saying
'dar-lho-ei' in Brazil would sound very formal.
Google Translate is definitely a work in progress!
On Apr 5, 4:28 pm, joao faria wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> Indeed, I've just tried the translation Portuguese/English of the
> words words "Bicha" and "Autocarro".
> The results were "Queer" and "Bus". I changed the word "queer" into
> "queue", since "bicha" in Portuguese from Portugal definetely does not
> mean "queer" or "faggot" or anything at all of that kind.
>
> Then I tried again. The results were the same
>
> I'm Portuguese. If anybody, a non-Portuguese- speaking tourist were to
> come to my country and I'd say something like "... you'll have to go
> to the end of that queue...", in Portuguese AND used the word "bicha",
> I'm pretty sure I'd get punched in the nose if that tourist had chosen
> to follow your translations.
>
> Please, be aware of that.
> And that goes to many languages.
>
> As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather NOT trust Google Translator.
> Some time ago, I translated a few words from Croatian into English. I
> was surprised the woman whom I was speaking to, had sent me such an
> intimate and sexual kiss. I asked her: it was a FRIENDLY kiss. If I
> weren't married, I would have taken the plane... and again, be punched
> in the nose.
> Thank you.
>
> On 5 Abr, 05:05, Ken Westmoreland wrote:
>
>
>
> > Thanks Josh,
>
> > I'm not as well versed in the technical aspects of this as I am the
> > linguistic ones, but appreciate that it is a big task. I think the
> > priority should be on getting grammatically correct translations
> > between languages, whatever the variety used. I may be a speaker of
> > British English, but I'd much rather have a translation into
> > grammatically correct American English than a translation that was
> > gibberish. :)
>
> > I notice that Google Translate translates 'form a queue' (which is
> > more British English) into Brazilian Portuguese as 'formar uma fila',
> > but when I tried using 'form a line' (which is more American) I got
> > 'formar uma linha', which is a literal translation. The correct
> > translation in Brazilian Portuguese is 'fazer uma fila', literally 'to
> > make a queue (or line)'. In European Portuguese, it would be 'fazer
> > uma bicha', which literally means 'make a worm', but in Brazil,
> > 'bicha' means 'queer' or 'fag', and Google's translation reflects
> > this.
>
> > When I translate the word 'fila' from Portuguese into English, I get
> > 'queue', as in British English, with 'line' only being the third
> > meaning listed.
>
> > I translated 'we travel by bus' into Portuguese, and although it
> > produced the Brazilian Portuguese 'viajamos de ônibus', I could click
> > on the word 'ônibus' and replace it with the European 'autocarro'.
>
> > Regards
>
> > Ken
>
> > On Apr 4, 10:00 pm, Josh (Google Employee) wrote:
>
> > > Hi guys,
>
> > > We would love to be able to provide different distinct systems for
> > > each dialect of languages, but unfortunately it can be very
> > > challenging as a large aspect of our system is training off parallel
> > > data, and before we can train of that data we have to detect what
> > > language it is. It is quite difficult in a large scale fashion to
> > > write language detectors that can differentiate between the various
> > > dialects of languages.
>
> > > We'll keep working on it, but it's unlikely we'll be able to offer
> > > distinct dialects for many of the languages any time in the near
> > > future.
>
> > > Best,
> > > Josh
>
> > > On Apr 4, 7:57 am, Ken Westmoreland wrote:
>
> > > > I agree, same with American and British English, or Castilian and
> > > > Latin American Spanish. It wouldn't be that hard to do, as the
> > > > differences are no greater than those between Indonesian and Malay, or
> > > > Czech and Slovak, which are considered separate languages. There are
> > > > two forms of Norwegian, Bokmål and Nynorsk, even though they're
> > > > spoken in the same country.
>
> > > > On Apr 4, 2:09 pm, Nelson do Nascimento wrote:
>
> > > > > Hello,
>
> > > > > I don't use Google Translator to translate to Portuguese, I only
> > > > > translate to English, because when I translate something to Portuguese
> > > > > it comes out in Brazilian-Portuguese, it's simply not correct and not
> > > > > accurate, Google should defenitly try to solve this out.- Hide quoted
> > > > > text -
>
> > > - Show quoted text -- Ocultar texto citado -
>
> > - Mostrar texto citado -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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