2006-08-24 07:27:50 · 6 answers · asked by cstoa10 5 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
I am always seeing someone asking for a translation and someone answering them by giving them something off of freetranslation , babelfish etc. Why do they do that when the translations are so poor?
2006-08-24 07:31:17 · update #1
I am always seeing someone asking for a translation and someone answering them by giving them something off of freetranslation , babelfish etc. Why do they do that when the translations are so poor?
2006-08-24 07:31:22 · update #2
Whoever directs you to a computer generated translation is someone that is either monolingual or doesn't have clue on how to translate. Such advises should always be rejected.
2006-08-24 07:35:39 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 1⤋
I think the people who advice using them are mostly people who don't have enough knowledge of another language to see how incredibly poor those translations are.
For those who think that a poor translations is better than none... if you write in Icelandic "Who owns this book?" and make a computer translate it you get the translation "Hot spring river this book?" Is that a useful translation? Not at all. You'd be better off looking every word up in a dictionary where you can actually read the multiple meanings of the words you need to translate and see which one fits the context the best. More work, but MUCH better results.
2006-08-24 15:21:11 · answer #2 · answered by undir 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Computer translation is in its infancy. Who knows here it'll go.
It's very difficult to find good translators. Also, it's very boring work. The caveats regarding machine translation have been made by others. It's good to get machines to do all that they can - you free the humans for the really demanding jobs.
2006-08-24 14:48:35 · answer #3 · answered by RebelBlood 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
because the have no education in that language, and haven't tried it themselves, and therefore don't realize that phrases you get from translators like "you stay him" don't really make sense
translators can work if you have a background knowledge in that language..you have to know how to use them. you have to know what form of a verb to use and not to use words with more than one meaning...i use them sometimes as a dictionary because my spanish/english dictionary is packed up right now to move back to school
2006-08-24 14:53:15 · answer #4 · answered by la wendada 3 · 3⤊ 1⤋
It's still a better alternative than not to translate at all.
2006-08-24 14:32:06 · answer #5 · answered by rose p 1 · 1⤊ 3⤋
babelfish works for me
2006-08-24 14:45:11 · answer #6 · answered by Vengeance_is_mine 3 · 1⤊ 3⤋