When in need of a translator
I occasionally have a need to translate a block of text from another language (or even an entire web page, or web site).
There are a couple I use, (and sometimes both on the same text), both to read the text (such as a comment on a blog entry), and to reply.
The first has its roots in the BBC – a radio show called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. In the show, a creature was described that when inserted in the ear, psionically translates the sound heard into the language of the carrier of the symbiote. It was called a babelfish, and the website that carries its name for translation tasks is http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
It has a reasonable number of languages that it can translate between, and typically translates well enough to be able to work out what is being said. In the example below, the lower text is the original provided, the upper box is the Babelfish translation.
Of course Google is not one to be left behind, and have also come up with a clever translator, simply called Google Translate. Both can handle websites as well, fwiw. Google has a larger language range.
Computer translation is a coarse tool at best, and this is only to perhaps give you a gist of what a block of text is saying if you don’t understand the language. It makes an interesting party game to take a block of text, translate it from English to (say) German, then from German to French, then back to English, and see if anyone at the party can figure out what the original sentence was.
I have a Chinese girlfriend who speaks broken English but we seem to communicate very well with each other, which is kinda funny at times. When someone speaks to her in English often she does not understand, I can say the same thing but said differently and she understands. The first person often looks at me as if to say ‘That’s what I said???’. All I do is simplify it a little and speak a little slower. I think there is a big lack of confidence factor involved with her also.
The big problem we both have is reading and writing to each other, which became very obvious when she went to Taiwan recently. Babel Fish and Google Translate will help a lot. Thanks, it will be very, very helpful.
Jimbo
I forgot to mention, though you probably gathered, that I do not speak any Chinese at all.