The new "alternative translations" function is an improvement in many ways, 
but because it doesn't allow rewriting of whole sentences it's impossible to 
correct errors in syntax.  For a simple example, in this morning's *Dagens 
Næringsliv* (Norway), there appears the following sentence:

*-Indeksene stiger på håp om en ”jobbplan” fra Obama i morgen som vil bidra 
med kortsiktig oppside fremover, sier strateg i PFA Pension Witold Bahrke 
til Bloomberg News.*

Which Google translates as

 -Indexes rise on hopes of a "work plan" from Obama tomorrow that will help 
with short-term upside to come, says strategist at PFA Pension Witold Bahrke 
to Bloomberg News.

Properly translated, this sentence should read something like,

"Indexes are rising on hopes for a 'jobs plan' from Obama tomorrow that will 
help with the short-term upside going forward," Witold Bahrke, a strategist 
at PFA Pension, told Bloomberg News.


I can suggest alternative translations for individual words, and an 
occasional pair of words, but I can't recast the sentence to bring it into 
line with the rules of (US) English syntax and journalistic style.  
Naturally, in translating languages such as German, which have very 
different syntax from English, this is an even bigger problem. The old 
version used to let us  suggest better translations sentence by sentence or 
paragraph by paragraph, which was a better method.  Any chance of going back 
to that?

Regards,

Jim Crutchfield
 

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