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• 2015-08-16T13:06:00+00:00 •
OK I am the first to admit that I am HOPELESS when it comes to foreign languages. Did some French at school, learned a few Russian words & phrases for a visit to Moscow, acquired a few words of Hebrew, but I speak ENGLISH. Sorry, some people speak other languages like a native, I can't.
So translation software is a real necessity when sending emails abroad.
It's a pretty apocryphal story, but it may as well be true - someone supposedly put "Coke Adds Life!" into a translation program, allowed it to bubble through to Chinese, and on the way back it became "Coke Brings Your Ancestors Back From The Dead".
"Lost in translation" as they say ...
I find that a safety net is using TWO pieces of software, one to translate English to whatever, and a separate program to try turning it back into English to see how near the mark the translated text is. (this has been important today as I've been having a discussion in Japanese and the Japanese grammar surrounding pronouns left me high and dry!)
Anyhoo - if anyone needs translation software, may I suggest that you DON'T bother with Google. Some of the best linguistic software comes from Russia, such as translate.ru. (the english version of the site is www.online-translator.com/Default.aspx?prmtlang=en). And for far east languages I've found www.systranet.com/translate/ to be pretty adequate.
So for example - start with www.systranet.com/translate/ generate your Japaese text, then copy/paste that into translate.ru and see if it still means what you intended :)
This has spared me a lot of embarassment !
So translation software is a real necessity when sending emails abroad.
It's a pretty apocryphal story, but it may as well be true - someone supposedly put "Coke Adds Life!" into a translation program, allowed it to bubble through to Chinese, and on the way back it became "Coke Brings Your Ancestors Back From The Dead".
"Lost in translation" as they say ...
I find that a safety net is using TWO pieces of software, one to translate English to whatever, and a separate program to try turning it back into English to see how near the mark the translated text is. (this has been important today as I've been having a discussion in Japanese and the Japanese grammar surrounding pronouns left me high and dry!)
Anyhoo - if anyone needs translation software, may I suggest that you DON'T bother with Google. Some of the best linguistic software comes from Russia, such as translate.ru. (the english version of the site is www.online-translator.com/Default.aspx?prmtlang=en). And for far east languages I've found www.systranet.com/translate/ to be pretty adequate.
So for example - start with www.systranet.com/translate/ generate your Japaese text, then copy/paste that into translate.ru and see if it still means what you intended :)
This has spared me a lot of embarassment !
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