Dear sirs, I've been testing the translator's ability to cope with common Latin phrases, and this is my feedback.
TLDR : The translator does not care about the language's grammar at all. That's why very gross and basic errors spoil all translations The Latin language has something peculiar, that is hard to explain in English. All indo-european languages have, to some extent, something called "declension": a word changes it's ending, and thus changes its meaning. In English the only trace left is the change from "I" to "me", "he" and "him", etc. Imagine a translator that reads the word "him" (that denotes the object of an action, the one who recieves the action, as in "i kicked him") and translated it as "he" (like "I kicked he"). The translation is clearly wrong. Even if the word is the correct one: third person masculine. I think the translation could be improved significantly if you considered declension as an important feature. I don't know exactly how this particular translation service works, but statistics are not working enough. Let me give you an example: there is a considerable quantity of words (20%) that follow the "Second declension". If you find a stem that belong to the second declension, and it ends in -i, the two only meanings are: singular possesive, or plural subject. Thus the word "patri" means either "of the father" or "fathers". Any other result is wrong, no matter what the statistical engine says. -- 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.
