[PnP] RE : RE : P&P Files

[Matijs van Zuijlen]

On 02/12/2012 11:25 PM,  Thomas O. Magann Jr. wrote:
> Just how good ARE online translators. I remember a story from the early years
> of computing (not saying it's true, mind) back when smart phone equivalent
> coputers were the size of buildings, that they came up with an
> english-russian translator that could work either direction. They input, so
> the story goes, the phrase "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" in, translated to
> russian, then back to english. The result was, supposedly; "Invisible,
> Imbecile." Are online translators any better than that, these days?

I remember reading the same story, but with "The spirit is willing but the flesh 
is weak", becoming "The drinks are good but the meat is bad" (or similar).

Both problems stem from a reliance on grammatical rules with a minimal 
dictionary, whereas Google translate for instance relies on a huge database 
containing whole phrases. It succeeds for both these phrases, except that in the 
second case it detected the Russian as Macedonian at first (and produced 
gibberish as a result).

These data-driven systems actually do worse with new phrases that are not 
well-known sayings. Also, I follow a Japanes twitter account through a 
translator, and the results range from bad to unintelligible.

Best thing is to just try it out. The results never seem to be of the "makes 
perfect sense but is actually wrong" variety, so if it's wrong you will know it.

>> I predict an uptick of usage of the google translate or babblefish. :}
>>
>> On Feb 12, 2012, at 11:30 AM, Tanghe, Thierry wrote:
>>
>>> I dont have the time to translate the 700 pages :) Obviously, my set of
>>> rules are for FR readers :-)
>>>
>>> TNT __

-- 
Matijs