Translator feedback wanted
January 5th, 2007 by Ryan Unger | 1,271 views
I have recently been testing Google’s translation tool and it seems to work pretty well (see flags on right). If you happen to speak any of the languages that this blog translates to, I would love to hear any comments/feedback as to the accuracy. I am interested in dynamically translating text variables and sending them to a mobile app using the translator API. I’ll post results as they come. I suspect that fonts will be the biggest issue due to the added file size.
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January 7th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Hi Ryan,
I tested it for brazilian portuguese and google does an OK job. Some phrases really don´t make sense and others sound like Yoda´s lines, but I could still get the “message” in the posts.
Regards,
Luciano
January 7th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Thanks for helping out with this. I have been getting a bunch of international traffic so I thought it may help things to have the translation options. I am very happy to hear that they (at least sort of) work.
Best,
Ryan
January 7th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
BTW Luciano,
The blog redesign looks great.
Ryan
January 8th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Thank you!
January 9th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Yes, Google translator and all other automatic translators are good to get the approximate gist of a text in a foreign language. You shouldn’t expect much more than this. It’s not one of these days that computers will learn how to think and process language the way humans do… but I think it’s good to give your non-English-speaking visitors the option of getting the gist of your content, as long as they understand that the output is computer-generated!
January 9th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Thanks for the feedback. Are there any “types” of phrases/speech methods that work better than others using the translator from Google? Or is it all pretty much yoda.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Ooops, I’m afraid I’m a little late… Yes, for best results with automatic translators just use extremely simple, formal, short and well structured sentences with no ambiguity, no double meanings, no slang and no misspellings. You will then optimize the chances to obtain a more understandable translation, but it will still feel and sound a bit awkward…
August 21st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I recently created a translation guide at http://www.work.com/language-translation-services-16002/
It discusses an array of translation solutions that suit different needs, thought you would enjoy it.
Cheers,
Jaime