Walter Bright wrote:
> Hasan Aljudy wrote:
>> Seeing as how automated translation is horrible at best, might as well just drop the whole idea ...
> 
> I've experimented with the German=>English translations (see http://www.generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html) and, while horrible, is decipherable. It's better (much better) than nothing.
> 
> It's also kinda fun :-)

Some of the englisg is very hard to understand, while other parts are surprisingly well translated.

For instance this segment I thought was rather good.

We take the glow small lamp from the box and connect the connections with the connections + and -4.5 V (fig. 2). Then we switch the switch on S6. The small lamp will brightly burn. The thin wire contained in the small lamp now forms a connection between the power source connections, and it comes off a strong electron flow, which is so strong that the electrons rub against the atoms of the thread very strongly 1). Friction however produces as well known warmth; it becomes so strong in our case that the thread begins glowing and light produced. The river flows thereby in such a way, like it into fig. 3 registered is i.e., from the negative pole thick with electrons over the small lamp to the positive terminal.

-Joel

janderson wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Hasan Aljudy wrote:
>>> Seeing as how automated translation is horrible at best, might as well just drop the whole idea ...
>>
>> I've experimented with the German=>English translations (see http://www.generalatomic.com/teil1/index.html) and, while horrible, is decipherable. It's better (much better) than nothing.
>>
>> It's also kinda fun :-)
> 
> Some of the englisg is very hard to understand, while other parts are surprisingly well translated.
> 
> For instance this segment I thought was rather good.
> 
> We take the glow small lamp from the box and connect the connections with the connections + and -4.5 V (fig. 2). Then we switch the switch on S6. The small lamp will brightly burn. The thin wire contained in the small lamp now forms a connection between the power source connections, and it comes off a strong electron flow, which is so strong that the electrons rub against the atoms of the thread very strongly 1). Friction however produces as well known warmth; it becomes so strong in our case that the thread begins glowing and light produced. The river flows thereby in such a way, like it into fig. 3 registered is i.e., from the negative pole thick with electrons over the small lamp to the positive terminal.

Yes, I sure wish I had these translations as a kid (when I got the Kosmos set).

Deewiant wrote:

> Jari-Matti Mäkelä wrote:
>> Google Translate does not support finnish yet, but I found www.tranexp.com. Well, it does look a bit hilarious :D
>> 
> 
> InterTran's Finnish translation is a joke. I don't know what it's logic is in translating the English "I" to "I-KIRJAIN" (literally "THE LETTER I") instead of "minä". That's one of the most basic words in either language, and can't be that hard to get right.

I guess they must have had some joker as a summer trainee there. :) It's a bit unfortunate that some sites even use that kind of service to serve localized pages.

-- 
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten.

Op Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:46:24 -0700
schreef Walter Bright <newshound@digitalmars.com>:

> Hasan Aljudy wrote:

> > I don't think it's google that wrote the translation engines .. it's probably some other company's 30+ years of work!
> 
> You're right they bought it. But I think they'll continue to improve it, because doing it better can be worth enormous money.

The Systran software they have licensed (not bought AFAIK) hasn't improved in any obvious way since the first time I used it something like 10 years ago...

It's often usable if you want to get an impression of what a page talks about, but IMHO technical documentation requires accuracy.

E.g., something like "Objets de classe d'Instantiating ailleurs que le tas de CHROMATOGRAPHIE GAZEUSE" is complete nonsense if you are talking about D.   ;-)


-- 
JanC

Jan Claeys wrote:
> The Systran software they have licensed (not bought AFAIK) hasn't
> improved in any obvious way since the first time I used it something
> like 10 years ago...

That's disappointing.

> It's often usable if you want to get an impression of what a page talks
> about, but IMHO technical documentation requires accuracy.

I've used it to translate tech stuff from other languages into english, and if one is careful to use it as a guide rather than gospel, it is very useful.

(I once spent time in Japan working on porting software to various Japanese computers. The only tech manuals available were written in Japanese. I don't know more than 10 words of Japanese, but I was amazed at how far I could get in understanding the manuals with just a hint here and there - so I tend to regard even a ludicrously lame google translation as a miracle <g>.)

Jan Claeys wrote:
> Op Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:46:24 -0700
> schreef Walter Bright <newshound@digitalmars.com>:
> 
>> Hasan Aljudy wrote:
> 
>>> I don't think it's google that wrote the translation engines ..
>>> it's probably some other company's 30+ years of work!  
>> You're right they bought it. But I think they'll continue to improve
>> it, because doing it better can be worth enormous money.
> 
> The Systran software they have licensed (not bought AFAIK) hasn't
> improved in any obvious way since the first time I used it something
> like 10 years ago...
> 
> It's often usable if you want to get an impression of what a page talks
> about, but IMHO technical documentation requires accuracy.
> 
> E.g., something like "Objets de classe d'Instantiating ailleurs que le
> tas de CHROMATOGRAPHIE GAZEUSE" is complete nonsense if you are
> talking about D.   ;-)
> 
> 

Actually I was looking up "free statistical translation" (or something like that) in Google, when I discovered a Google Blog entry stating that Google now uses a statistical model for translating Arabic and Chinese (I think all languages labeled BETA use that model now)
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical-machine-translation-live.html

and, interestingly enough, you can now "suggest a better translation" for any piece of text that Google translates! I'm guessing it goes through some sort of filtering mechanism then gets passed to the statistical engine.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/suggest-better-translation.html

I've found that translating news articles from Arabic to English gives very good results ..
However, translating technical articles from English to Arabic gives the crappiest results!! I guess it all depends on what they feed the statistical engine.

Try it on aljazeera.net or something .. I think you'll be amazed; I was. I never thought there'd be any hope for "reasonable" machine translation involving Arabic, and I happily admit that I've been proved wrong!

Jascha Wetzel wrote:
> here is an article about a system that's supposed to work - it considers
> context. google's translator obviously doesn't.
> 
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate.html

Google actually uses this system for a couple of languages now .. (see my other post today .. (damn, how do you get the post links from Thunderbird?))

> 
> Roberto Mariottini wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> I've been looking into adding buttons to the D web pages to do
>>> automatic translation to different languages. The trouble is, the
>>> google translator also attempts to translate the code blocks,
>>> resulting in a mess.
>> The real trouble is that these translators are not good enough for
>> 'production'.
>>
>> Here in Italy we laugh at sites automatically translated, we even signal
>> them to friends by e-mail.
>> One of the funniest was the now non-working it.mp3u.com, where you could
>> find some pearls like:
>>
>> "100% risk free" => "100% rischia liberamente" that means "you risk 100%
>> freely" (ROTFL), and should be "Libero da rischi al 100%".
>>
>> Ciao
>>
>> P.S.: Google Translate brings "rischio di 100% liberamente" that means
>> "risk of 100% freely". LOL

Hasan Aljudy wrote:
> Jascha Wetzel wrote:
>> here is an article about a system that's supposed to work - it considers
>> context. google's translator obviously doesn't.
>>
>> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/translate.html
> 
> Google actually uses this system for a couple of languages now .. (see my other post today .. (damn, how do you get the post links from Thunderbird?))
> 

I guess: news://news.digitalmars.com:119/eu9lfk$1ehf$1@digitalmars.com

Hasan Aljudy wrote:
> and, interestingly enough, you can now "suggest a better translation" for any piece of text that Google translates! I'm guessing it goes through some sort of filtering mechanism then gets passed to the statistical engine.
> 
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/suggest-better-translation.html

Once again, harnessing the power of crowds!

I wish they'd do the new translator for the rest of the languages, too.

Hasan Aljudy wrote:
> 
> 
> Jan Claeys wrote:
>> Op Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:46:24 -0700
>> schreef Walter Bright <newshound@digitalmars.com>:
>>
>>> Hasan Aljudy wrote:
>>
>>>> I don't think it's google that wrote the translation engines ..
>>>> it's probably some other company's 30+ years of work!  
>>> You're right they bought it. But I think they'll continue to improve
>>> it, because doing it better can be worth enormous money.
>>
>> The Systran software they have licensed (not bought AFAIK) hasn't
>> improved in any obvious way since the first time I used it something
>> like 10 years ago...
>>
>> It's often usable if you want to get an impression of what a page talks
>> about, but IMHO technical documentation requires accuracy.
>>
>> E.g., something like "Objets de classe d'Instantiating ailleurs que le
>> tas de CHROMATOGRAPHIE GAZEUSE" is complete nonsense if you are
>> talking about D.   ;-)
>>
>>
> 
> Actually I was looking up "free statistical translation" (or something like that) in Google, when I discovered a Google Blog entry stating that Google now uses a statistical model for translating Arabic and Chinese (I think all languages labeled BETA use that model now)
> http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical-machine-translation-live.html 
> 
> 
> and, interestingly enough, you can now "suggest a better translation" for any piece of text that Google translates! I'm guessing it goes through some sort of filtering mechanism then gets passed to the statistical engine.
> 
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/suggest-better-translation.html

This is cool.  Perhaps someone will summit better translated D pages. Then with small changes hopefully the translation would stay reasonably decent.

> 
> I've found that translating news articles from Arabic to English gives very good results ..
> However, translating technical articles from English to Arabic gives the crappiest results!! I guess it all depends on what they feed the statistical engine.
> 
> Try it on aljazeera.net or something .. I think you'll be amazed; I was. I never thought there'd be any hope for "reasonable" machine translation involving Arabic, and I happily admit that I've been proved wrong!