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increpatio
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« Reply #15 on: 16:56:55, 20-08-2007 » |
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Hmmmm. First impressions not great - which site was that from, incre?
That was from google. |
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Daniel
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« Reply #16 on: 17:01:43, 20-08-2007 » |
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Daniel, I think you were translating German to English rather than English to German there? Ja, is that verboten? (he said having learnt German from a comic) |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #17 on: 17:03:10, 20-08-2007 » |
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paralink: Der Wodka ist stark, aber das Fleisch ist faul. We do seem to be getting 'faul' for quite a lot of meanings here!  InterTran: Die Wodka ist stark aber die Fleisch ist mürbe. I've never heard the word 'mürbe' in my life and I don't have a German dictionary to hand, so I'll have to suspend judgment on that one. I'm a little surprised by the discrepancy in gender for vodka; I'd go for masculine myself but I wouldn't like to stake my life (or even my liver) on it. 'Stark' is a bit literal, isn't it? Ah. Just looked at the gender thing again. Hadn't noticed 'die Fleisch' before - it's actually just translating 'the' consistently as 'the', whatever the following noun, isn't it!  |
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« Last Edit: 17:37:04, 20-08-2007 by time_is_now »
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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time_is_now
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« Reply #18 on: 17:04:23, 20-08-2007 » |
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Daniel, I think you were translating German to English rather than English to German there? Ja, is that verboten? (he said having learnt German from a comic) No, but you were roadtesting the one I recommended by feeding it incre's deliberately nonsensical German! Wasn't sure if you realised that he'd produced that sentence by google-translating Tim's previous comment.  |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Daniel
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« Reply #19 on: 17:09:10, 20-08-2007 » |
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Oh, I'd better go home cos I don't speak German innit  |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #20 on: 17:13:07, 20-08-2007 » |
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Oh, I'd better go home cos I don't speak German innit Wonder how any of the net translators would cope with that!  Just tried InterTran with Tim's earlier sentence. It gives: Don't geh zu beliebig Ärger meinetwillen ICH war eben dasein faul. which is another silly word-for-word one (including 'Don't', which I'm amazed they haven't managed to filter out, and even more ridiculously, 'ICH' in capital letters to match the English 'I'). But it does seem to recognise 'on my account' as a single unit of meaning, even if the translation it comes up with makes it sound like something out of a piece of fin-de-siècle poetry ... |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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SimonSagt!
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« Reply #21 on: 17:37:31, 20-08-2007 » |
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What a fascinating thread!
I did the text into Italian, which I probably know best.
The following are the results:
Don't go to any trouble on my account - I was just being lazy in asking!
Google:
Non andare ad alcuna difficoltà sul mio cliente - ero essere giusto pigro nel chiedere!
Alta Vista (= Babel fish):
Non vada ad alcuna difficoltà sul mio cliente - ero essere giusto pigro nel chiedere!
Free translation:
Didn’t work!
Dictionary x 10:
(This provided options of infinitive and imperative, whatever that means, cos it didn't make any difference in this case! There was also an eminently sensible warning about limitations)
Non andare ad alcuna difficoltà sul mio cliente - stavo essendo appena pigro nella chiedere!
Inter Tran:
Don't vai a qualsiasi guaio acceso mio conto IO fu giusto essendo pigro in chiedere!
Applied language solutions:
Non vada ad alcuna difficoltà sul mio cliente - ero essere giusto pigro nel chiedere!
All pretty bad, IMO, with major grammatical errors, except for Dictionaryx10, which would score best, I think. Not bad at all, that one.
Inter-tran is worst.
I hope this has been helpful. I'll see how it works with French later, if nobody else does.
bws S-S!
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The Emperor suspected they were right. But he dared not stop and so on he walked, more proudly than ever. And his courtiers behind him held high the train... that wasn't there at all.
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SimonSagt!
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« Reply #22 on: 17:51:31, 20-08-2007 » |
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Here's the French version of the same exercise. Again, not good - even Dictionaryx10 missed out this time.
I don't use these very often - a dictionary suits me better - but it seems clear at least, from a useful experiment, that Inter-Tran is appalling - and hilarious! - though, interestingly, it was the only one to get the sense of "just" meaning "only."
bws S-S!
Don't go to any trouble on my account - I was just being lazy in asking!
Google:
N'aller à aucun ennui sur mon compte - j'étais être juste paresseux en demandant !
Alta Vista = Babel fish:
N'allez à aucun ennui sur mon compte - j'étais être juste paresseux en demandant !
Free translation:
Didn’t load again!
Dictionary x 10
N'aller à aucun ennui sur mon compte - j'étais juste paresseux en demandant !
Inter Tran:
Don't vont à tout cloudy one mon compte J'étais seulement être paresseux dans demandant!
Applied language solutions:
N'allez à aucun ennui sur mon compte - j'étais être juste paresseux en demandant !
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The Emperor suspected they were right. But he dared not stop and so on he walked, more proudly than ever. And his courtiers behind him held high the train... that wasn't there at all.
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #23 on: 21:13:15, 20-08-2007 » |
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Fascinating!
From the original "The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.", using InterTrans to convert German to Polish, then Polish to English, I got:
this fire-water is not tax , whereas this flesh is not crash.
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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TimR-J
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« Reply #24 on: 15:41:28, 26-08-2007 » |
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I'm rather tickled that my original post is being randomly translated into all sorts of languages. I wonder if J.K. Rowling has similar feelings about Harry Potter.
(Just in case anyone doesn't know the story behind "The vodka is strong...", it's a (famous, but probably apocryphal) mis-translation of "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak".)
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #25 on: 16:15:56, 26-08-2007 » |
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My kid bro. had an English manual for his first car, a Moskvich, which presumably had been translated by a Russian interpreter, and contained such gems as: The Moskvich car is equipped with disk-type wheels The car should be painted with a real hairbrush During reversing, the road in front of the rear of the car is illuminated... |
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #26 on: 14:38:23, 30-08-2007 » |
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I was reminded of this thread about the eccentric results produced by online translation services when I came across this translation of four lines from a Rilke poem in last night's Proms programme. The translation is credited to Alexander Goehr, and given that he's neither the composer of the piece in question nor a professional translator I thought they must have chosen his rendering for some remarkable poetic qualities it possessed - or maybe for its lucid and idiomatic English. I now realise it's not a translation into English at all but a translation into Goehrish. Here it is (original first): Bist du noch da? In welcher Ecke bist du? --
Du hast so viel gewusst von alledem
und hast so viel gekonnt, da du so hingingst
für alles offen, wie ein Tag, der anbricht ...Are you still there? In what corner are you? --
You knew so much of all these things
could do so much, as you went forth
open for everything, like a day, which dawns.The comma after 'day' was indeed there in the printed text. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #27 on: 15:02:18, 30-08-2007 » |
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He's not a professional translator, granted, but his father was the German conductor Walter Goehr, who came as a Jewish refugee to Britain in the early thirties. Was Sandy brought speaking both languages?
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time_is_now
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« Reply #28 on: 15:58:15, 30-08-2007 » |
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Oh yes, Ron, he certainly speaks both languages.
I just find the English of his translation extremely odd. Don't you?
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #29 on: 16:11:36, 30-08-2007 » |
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Quirky, maybe....
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