the internet breaks down another barrier: languages
Nothing is nicer, while working on the internet, to hear old barriers crumble. First, limitations to place and time disappeared. Communication tools and publishing tools became available at almost no cost. Now a new barrier seems to be breaking down, those between languages, as Google's translation tool offers a much better service than any of the previous online services.
"Believing is good, but testing is better," goes the saying and before joining the cheers, I will first ask my readers to join me for some testing. Especially those who are familiar with several languages, including German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugese and Russian I need to make a good assesment.
In this entry I will give you links to the translations of my weblog, the China Herald. I would appreciate it if you could compare the original with the translated edition and tell me whether it makes sense. You can do this in the comments or by email. Thanks for your help.
Mir bitte helfen, zu überprüfen, ob diese übersetzung sinnvoll auf Deutsch ist
Svp m'aider à vérifier si cette traduction se comprend en français
ارجو مساعدتي لمعرفة ما اذا كان هذا امر منطقي في الترجمة العربية (this does not work very wel)
Ayudarme por favor a comprobar si esta traducción tiene sentido en español
私がこの翻訳が日本語の意味を成しているかどうか確認するのを助けなさい。
저가 이 번역이 한국어에 있는 이해된는지 검사할 것을 도우십시오.
Ajudar-me por favor verificar se esta tradução faça o sentido em Portugese.
请帮我查是否有道理中文译本.
幫我查是否有道理中文譯本.
Aiutarlo prego a controllare se questa traduzione abbia il significato in italiano.
Пожалуйста, помогите мне проверить, правильно ли данный перевод имеет смысл в русском языке.
5 comments:
Just checked the Russian. It's a little funky -- it sounds as though a foreigner wrote it, not a native speaker. But it is damn good. This is what you would sound like in Russian, probably, if you wrote Russian, Fons!
I am *very* impressed. I would say that it is equivalent in quality to the Chinese translation. It is completely understandable, just sometimes the wording is a little funny and the grammar a bit off.
But you could say that for your English, posts, as well. :-)
Love your blog!
Hugs, Maria
I would say the google translation gets about 50% of the original message.
It helps the translators greatly in doing their work. But if you are talking about convey the idea to the readers, you still need a human to do the work.
The translation in French appears...in English?! Where is the French? :)
Sometimes Google failed to work. I had the same last night when I was explaining the Google-feature to an editor in the US. I click on the link in my text, and also got the English one. This one give the French one, although, a few seconds ago:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chinaherald.net&langpair=en%7Cfr&hl=en&oe=UTF8&ie=UTF8
Well, you can get the meaning of most of it but it's far from beeing a good translation. Some things just sound a little weird because the word order is not correct. But other are nonsense at the first read and you have to guess from the context what it acctually is supposed to say.
I like the translation of your blog's name though, "China Verkünder" (China announcer) sound funny.
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