Comments on: Machine Translation - How Bad Is It? http://www.translationjm.com/machine-translation-how-bad-is-it/ We Speak Your Language Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:26:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2 By: Charles http://www.translationjm.com/machine-translation-how-bad-is-it/#comment-5 Charles Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:16:13 +0000 http://www.translationjm.com/machine-translation-how-bad-is-it/#comment-5 worldbeing - Thanks for dropping by, (and thanks for spotting that mistake (mine) in the Human English version)! I've never tried Google Translate, but from your result, I must admit that it's more accurate than the other machine translation tool I used in my example. However, in your example, you used the tool to translate into a language you know. There’s a problem when webmasters use these tools to offer their website in other languages (that they don’t speak). Had you translated this paragraph into Russian for example, assuming you don't speak Russian, you never would have been able to spot the few minor mistakes nor correct them in a couple of seconds. Now, imagine a complete website, filled with minor mistakes. In addition, the text in this example is as simple as it gets, so a few mistakes is probably a best case scenario. --Charles worldbeing - Thanks for dropping by, (and thanks for spotting that mistake (mine) in the Human English version)! I’ve never tried Google Translate, but from your result, I must admit that it’s more accurate than the other machine translation tool I used in my example.

However, in your example, you used the tool to translate into a language you know. There’s a problem when webmasters use these tools to offer their website in other languages (that they don’t speak). Had you translated this paragraph into Russian for example, assuming you don’t speak Russian, you never would have been able to spot the few minor mistakes nor correct them in a couple of seconds. Now, imagine a complete website, filled with minor mistakes. In addition, the text in this example is as simple as it gets, so a few mistakes is probably a best case scenario.
–Charles

]]> By: worldbeing http://www.translationjm.com/machine-translation-how-bad-is-it/#comment-4 worldbeing Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:41:50 +0000 http://www.translationjm.com/machine-translation-how-bad-is-it/#comment-4 I just tried translating the French paragraph using Google Translate and the results are amazing: "Bob works for a small business in downtown. Bob's work consists of repairing computers and installing new software. During his spare time he likes to read, watch movies and playing poker with his friends. Bob was 30 years old and lives in a large house with his wife and children." There are a few minor mistakes "playing poker" instead of "play poker", "a small business in downtown" instead of "a small business downtown". and "was 30 years old" instead of "is 30 years old" which can be corrected in a couple seconds. I don't speak French but could quickly correct these errors. If you compare to the human translation, even the human translation has a mistake - "consists in" instead of "consists of" and I'm sure it took much longer. I just tried translating the French paragraph using Google Translate and the results are amazing:
“Bob works for a small business in downtown. Bob’s work consists of repairing computers and installing new software. During his spare time he likes to read, watch movies and playing poker with his friends. Bob was 30 years old and lives in a large house with his wife and children.”
There are a few minor mistakes “playing poker” instead of “play poker”, “a small business in downtown” instead of “a small business downtown”. and “was 30 years old” instead of “is 30 years old” which can be corrected in a couple seconds. I don’t speak French but could quickly correct these errors. If you compare to the human translation, even the human translation has a mistake - “consists in” instead of “consists of” and I’m sure it took much longer.

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