Sunday, February 20, 2011

Translating is a fun kinda thingyy!!! ;)

We all may have used Google Translate or Yahoo Babel Fish to translate a block of English text to Spanish or French once in a while. I always use a loop or a workflow during the translation to make sure that I omit most of the translator errors, as you can see any of the translators hasn't reached 100% correctness yet (not even near to that).
Let's take the requirement as a translation of a block of English text into Spanish. 

* Get the Spanish translation from the translator (English -> Spanish).
* Swap the mode of translator (to Spanish -> English), and get the English translation of the Spanish translation.
* If the English translation and the original text are similar (obviously they won't be identical), we are good to go. Let's use the Spanish translated text.
* If not, just extract the correctly translated block, and change the incorrectly translated one a bit and put it back to English -> Spanish translator and continue the loop till they become the same.

Some tips..
* It's better to use simple and complete English in translation to get it translated correct.
* Avoid, 'Will do', and use 'I will do' instead. Most probably 'Will do' will be translated wrong, though it is pretty obvious in English that 'Will do' is similar to 'I will do'.
* Avoid idioms, confusing phrases/words, and peacock words those have no value. Give it simple and straight.

Anyway technology and tools can never replace a cute and adorable human translator. After all, you know.. translating is a fun! :D

2 comments:

  1. Good one! I used to use google translate for Portuguese all the time until I learnt that Google translate gives translations in Brazilian portuguese and not European Portuguese:S

    And hey you should automate the loop with a program;)

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  2. Thanks Harini,

    Something similar applies to Chinese too. I translate into Simplified Chinese usually, where Google also has translation to Traditional Chinese as well.

    Automating the loop is a good idea. But, I guess, the program itself will be as complex as the translator, almost. :D

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