Have you ever tried google translate service? I know, if you did you wish you didn’t, unless you were bored, and were looking for some ways to amuse yourself. But you know, translating text is a really daunting task. Generations of PhD’s have been spent in progressing the state of the art just a little bit every time. I know what I am speaking about, I lived with some of them in COGS, at Sussex University. I remember reading somewhere that new, better automatic translators will soon be available. Good! We are waiting for them.
In the meantime…
I had this idea:
Have you ever tried to translate a page from a language you don’t know… quite well. But you are not also totally ignorant about. Something in between. Here in Europe is quite common. And the same is true when I read posts in Portuogese, or in American from people on the other side of the ocean.
Yes, I can try to use Google translate mechanism, but it doesn’t give me something easyto chew. Look at this post, for example:
Depois do high vem o low. É uma lei do universo.
E no low todo mundo é feio e o mundo é triste e é tudo um saco.E eu já nem sei o que me move.
From here
Google translates it as:
es low.? a law of the universe. E in low everybody? ugly and the world? sad e? everything a bag.
E I j? nor I know what it moves me.
From my darling Alenahra.
I suppose a better translation would be:
After a high comes a low. It is a law of the universe. And in a low everybody is ugly and the world is sad and everything is empty.
And I still don’t know what is that moves me.
And Ale’ will tell me if I got it right.
My idea is that Google, instead of providing for a tentative answer should provide for all the possible translations for each word. Those translated words should appear when we point to a word with the mouse. I know it is a slow way of reading a document, one word at a time, but soon the reader will catch up the most common words, and will speed up.
What follow is an example. Move on the words to see the title appear. I used some simple translation that I could find. Obviously the tool I envision would have to be more professional.
Depois do high vem o low .É uma lei do universo .E no low todo mundo é feio e o mundo é triste e é tudo um saco.
E eu já nem sei o que me move .
In Italy right now more and more people are getting confortable with english. If you werte to come here only 10 years ago most people would refuse to even try to speak engliish, even if they studied it in school. Now, I believe thanks to internet, people are reading english pages daily, the dictionary often ina corner of the desk, ready to be used. It would be helpful for them to have sucha system.
And I would finally learn Portuogese!
Porto Alegre, aspettami!
Special thanks to travlang.com for providing part of the translations.
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