Has any found a half-decent online translator for European languages?


Hey

I don’t use online translators on principle, especially for French and German because the grammar is always a little strange and you don’t always get the correct meaning across I have found!!! (Lost in translation… literally). I studied sites such as

http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html

and

http://translation2.paralink.com/

though I am still trying to find one which gives generally accurate results. Any suggestions?

(A good way to check the accuracy of a translator is to type a message, translate it to another language and translate it back to language).

On the contrary, does anyone knoe of any software on the market which is capable of accuratly translating European languages (preferably German/French though you can get alot of variation depending on which part of the world the langauge comes from)

Also on the contrary, does anyone have any amusing stories regarding online translators? (The can be a nightmare for businesses)

Regards

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Posted in Other - Education |

One Response

  1. plaidfreak Says:
    July 25th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

    Generally speaking, I do not trust online translators at all. They are only useful to get a gist of what the original source text is saying. Currently, we do not have the technology to produce a target text that accurately conveys the meaning of the original text AND is grammatically correct in the target text. It’s just not possible without human intervention.

    By the way, the way you mentioned to check the accuracy of a translator is probably not the best method to use, because back translations are never accurate, even with a human. Back translations are never considered an accurate form of translation testing in the industry. It is difficult for even the best human translator to determine exactly what the original author meant to say through a translated phrase. A good translator is able to convey the meaning of a source text. A machine cannot determine meaning very easily.

    The link below demonstrates SYSTRAN machine translations. At the end, it shows what happens when you translate the same phrase over and over again with different languages.