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Armchair field linguistics experiment | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes  1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 14 24 March 2009 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
A very realistic prediction, I would expect such an outcome as well. Fasulye-Babylonia Edited by Fasulye on 24 March 2009 at 11:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5956 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 10 of 14 24 March 2009 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for your comments and while I do not disagree with any of them, some of them may miss the point slightly. I agree that this would be an ugly way to actually learn a language. I intend to begin learning Turkish, according to my present schedule, in fifteen years, and rest assured, even I would not be deranged enough to take this approach for a goal of actually learning the language correctly.
Rather, I have set this up just for some language-related fun, and the fact that the translation may be dodgy at times and inconsistent between different machine translations, frankly, just intrigues me more, in the same way that I enjoy fiction involving an unreliable narrator (no one does this better than Gene Wolfe, I'll take the liberty of throwing in entirely gratuitiously!). This just makes the puzzle aspect of this more challenging and interesting. I am not concerned that this little puzzle and any resulting wildly incorrect grammatical conclusions that I may draw from it will prejudice my ability way down the road to actually learn it correctly. Nor am I particularly interested in puzzling it out necessarily correctly. The result is just as interesting if machine translation results logically in entirely incorrectly findings as to grammar. On the issue of inconsistent translations (and many thanks Iversen for the work you carried out), there may be issues here of entirely faulty translations, or there may be variation in accepted translation (for example, one translating "merci" in English as "Thank you" and someone else translating this as "Thanks"). What may be useful is a third translation source for a third data point on particular translations. Anyone know of any that will work for Turkish, other than google and babylon? In the meantime, if no one minds, no more translations (expect perhaps a third source translation of the phrases already translated) pending working through what is on the table now. I am keen on a long-fuse project involving spending not much time each day analyzing slowly-arriving data. (I am philosophically opposed to doing anything quickly, or even in a reasonable time frame.) Edited by Spanky on 24 March 2009 at 7:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5956 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 11 of 14 24 March 2009 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, unless I can find some aspirin if a real hurry, I give up. Probably.
I just tried "I have a blue book" on a third translation website (LEC) and it provides a third translation: Benim mavi bir kitabım var. This appears materially different than the previously obtained translations as set out by Iversen: I have a blue book ==== Ben mavi bir kitap var ==== BEN mavi bir kitap Looks hopeless, or as the Turkish would say... well, I don't know how the Turkish would say this, and I am not prepared at this point to put any stock in machine translation. I blame Skynet for this mayhem. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pitwo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6159 days ago 103 posts - 121 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 12 of 14 24 March 2009 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, for kicks and since I had free time, I decided to try the same only from french to English. The correct form is given in parenthesis:
J'ai un livre & nbsp; -> I have a book (I have a book) J'ai deux livres &n bsp; -> I have two books & nbsp;(I have two books) J'ai un livre bleu -> I have a blue book (I have a blue book) J'ai deux livres bleus -> I have two blue books (I have two blue books) J'ai un livre rouge & nbsp;-> I have a red book (I have a red book) Je n'ai pas un livre -> I do not have a book (I don't have a book) Je n'ai pas un livre bleu -> I do not have a blue book (I don't have a blue book) Je n'ai pas de livres -> I have no books ; (I don't have books ) Je n'ai pas deux livres -> I do not have two books (I don't have two books) Je n'ai pas deux livres bleus -> I did not have two blue books (I don't have two blue books) J'ai le livre & nbsp; -> My book &nbs p; (I have the book) J'ai les deux livres -> I have two books & nbsp;(I have the two books) J'ai les deux livres bleus -> I have both Blue Books (I have the two blue books) Je possède un livre -> I have a book &n bsp; (I own a book) J'achète un livre & nbsp; -> Buy a book &nbs p; (I buy a book) So, what does this tell us ? Learn from real stuff :) Edited by pitwo on 24 March 2009 at 8:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 14 25 March 2009 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learn from real stuff ...
Or use a grammar and a dictionary. If I wanted to know what that "ben(im)" thing in Turkish is then I would first look it up in a dictionary, and if it seemed to be part of some complicated system then I might have a peek into a real grammar. Then I would be better prepared to understand the role and meaning of Ben if I met him in real life.. And let's not underestimate the digital translators - after all, the first cars also looked ridiculous. The development is going fast these days, and it would take a human being a long time to learn Turkish well enough to compete with one of those translator programs even at their present level. Edited by Iversen on 25 March 2009 at 1:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 14 02 October 2009 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spanky, I find your project captivating! Reminds me of a Science Fiction novel where you have to guess some martian message using only a few texts.
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