Online Translators

[gerry]

I was using one of these Online Translators earlier today for a project i'm doing.I had to change an English paragraph into German wording.However once it displayed the German, i changed it back to English but this time the paragraph was different wording.As a matter of fact it didn't make any sense there was German words & English words mixed together.Any ideas why this happened?.Does anyone know of any accurate online translators i can use?.

[TracyJ]

I have passed many a minute doing stuff like that on purpose cos I have a sad life and think the outcomes are hilarious.....However, my theory is that the laws of grammar are so different in languages, coupled with the ease at which ambiguities occur that I think it would be almost impossible to achieve the same outcome. The most accurate of the online translators I've used has been Babelfish, but even so I expect it to only give me an idea of the words I actually require.

[IndieSinger]

Online translators are only any good for simple, short tasks (like finding out the gender for a word or finding out adjectival endings) which are one, two or three word sentences. These is no such thing as an "accurate online translator" unless by "online" you include e-mailing a real human translator like you can with Systrans (for a very high price).

 

Try to translate anything more complicated than half a sentence and the likelihood is that it will make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

 

But don't forget that by translating it back into English, you're effectively giving it twice as much chance to be wrong. So the translation into the target language won't be quite as bad as the re-translation into the source language.

[kempie]

This is the difference between translation and interpretation - words can be translated on a (mostly) one-to-one basis but a phrase may convey an idea which may not have an equivalent in other languages and thus needs to be interpreted.

[palfreyman18]

Yeah this is quite hilarious as me and my sister were translating nursery rhyems from english to french and then back into english. This is very funny and we have made up a dictionary of English-French-English. Bits of our dictionary are as follows:

Ran = Functioned

Away = Far

Stuck = Wedged

Market = Stockmarket

Hickory Dickory Dock = The Dock of Hickory upon Dickory

Fiddle = Violin

Ran Away = Functioned Far