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May 5, 2008
Lost in Translation??
I was doing a quick SiteMeter check to see where recent blog traffic had come from, and I noticed a visitor from Germany. I followed the link to the visit entry page and discovered, lo and behold, that Inner Geek has been translated into German! In fact, I learned that Google translates between a number of language pairs: between English and Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Frendh, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Portugese as well as between traditional and contemporary Chinese and between German and French.
"Inner Geek ... out and about" became "Ein Computer-Freak ... Ausfluege and Sehenswuerdigkeiten."
Hmmm, I think there's a bit lost in translation there, don't you? "Inner Geek" means SO much more than "Ein Computer-Freak."
I looked at the top of the Google page and found the following:
Diese Seite wurde aus Englisch automatisch übersetzt. Zurück zu den Suchergebnissen
Originale Webseite anzeigen oder bewegen Sie die Maus über den Text, um die Originalsprache anzuzeigen.
If my German is still any good, it means something like the following:
This site was translated into English automatically (by machine?) You can go back to the original website or mouse over the text if you want to see it in the original language.
How about that? Hold the mouse over the German sentence, and the original English appears. It does.
I think some of the translation is spot on. But some is a little weird, especially with collquial expressions. (Otherwise is asking a lot of a computer.) See for yourself. I copied and pasted the first paragraph from the German version of my last post ("Old Friends"), and it inserted the English sentences before the German ones. It's kind of geeky, but if you have studied German, you might enjoy this, as I did.
I've been putting off this decision for a long time, and today was the day to make it. Ich war Putting off diese Entscheidung für eine lange Zeit, und heute war der Tag zu machen. Shall I leave my LPs and turntable behind, or drag them along on this move? Soll ich meinen LPs und hinter Plattenspieler, oder ziehen Sie sie auf dieser entlang bewegen? I've gotten pretty good at pitching stuff in the past few weeks, so I felt ready to confront the decision. Ich habe mittlerweile recht gut im Pitching Zeug in den letzten Wochen, so fühlte ich mich bereit zu konfrontieren, die Entscheidung. When the time was right, I was rested, and the light was good, I sat down next to the cupboard where the LPs are stored. Wenn die Zeit richtig war, war ich ausgeruht, und das Licht gut war, ich saß neben dem Schrank, in dem die LPs gespeichert sind.
What will those Google folks come up with next? I'm going to Germany this summer and will definitely be taking my laptop.
Here is a link to the FAQ about how the Google translator works. "FAQ" becomes Haeufig gestellte Fragen.
Posted by hgroteva at May 5, 2008 4:33 PM | Technology