5 replies to this topic

[Debra]

I'm always on the lookout for translation tools...... this site was mentioned in a newsletter I get and I've found that it offers all the languages I need in one spot. Great!

http://www.faganfinder.com/translate/

bom dia! ( portuguese for good morning)

[qwerty]

I spend a lot of time on a Czech web site (for fun, not work), and I've been trying to find a decent way to understand what's being said in there. I went out and bought a Czech/English dictionary a week or two back.

I'm afraid this tool didn't manage any better than the one I'd been using. I tried translating

Krásná náladovka z Krkonoš ... možná trochu té prázdnoty vpravo ... i když možná i ta prázdnota je zajímavá ... vše je relativní

(I have no idea what that means, so my apologies if it's something that doesn't belong here) into English and I got

Krsnáá nladovkaá out of Krkonoš ... vantageá somewhat té przdnotyá to the right... albeit vantageá as well as the przdnotaá them take prisoneríá ... everything them relativityí

Grrr.... I don't know if that's because people are writing in some Czech form of internet shorthand or what, but I'm still in the dark. So if anybody finds a tool that can translate Slavic languages, please let me know.

[dragonlady7]

"z" means "out of"? Yo.

Buy yourself a Slav, I hear they're quite cheap. My company uses several as programmers. The Russians are hard workers, but the Poles are friendlier.
Ha! Ha! I'm so funny.
I'm just kidding, in case anyone didn't get my not-so-funny joke.

We were given an assignment in one of my classes-- we had to go find a chatterbot, have a conversation with it, copy the conversation, and paste it into the Babelfish translator, translate it from English to another language, from that other language to a third, and then from that third language back to English.
Fabulous stuff. (Some of us found two chatterbots and got them to talk to each other for further surreality. If you pair up Eliza with Zippy the Pinhead, you get pure gold.)

[qwerty]

There was a hilarious book (I wish I could remember the title and where I saw it) that was originally a simple phrase book for travellers, but it got translated too many times and turned into absolute nonsense.

And of course, about a year or two back, the bad translation of the introduction of some video game led to the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" craze.

[mcanerin]

I think the one you are thinking of is "English as She is Spoke", Bob.

"Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."
— Mark Twain on English As She Is Spoke

You can get a short history of it at the Collins Library

Ian

Edited by mcanerin, 28 August 2003 - 05:02 PM.

[qwerty]

Yes! That's the one. And now I remember where I saw it -- about five years ago, a friend of mine gave me a very odd date book, and it (or possibly excerpts from it) was in the back of it.