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Reading this forum via google translation

  Tags: Google | Reading
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
17 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5474 days ago

821 posts - 1273 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: FrenchB1

 
 Message 1 of 17
06 September 2013 at 1:26am | IP Logged 
Hey peoples, Peoples Republic of China, people of the Kingdom of Bhutan, rappers MC's, professors,
janitors, & magicians,

I've just decided (yesterday/ayer/gisteren/hier) that I would attempt to read every post on this forum (during
lunch breaks at work/trabajo/werk/travail etc. I generally loathe FB, forums, online games etc mainly because
I don't like wasting my time with (in my opinion/à mon avis) needless mind-wasting crap when I could be
learning a language, or procrastinating over learning a language by reading other (à l'avis des autres
personnes) mindless garbage. So my question is this...

Would it be 'good' in your (citizens of the world including the depths of the deepest lakes & beyond into outer
space) opinion to.... wait for it... are you waiting? Better be! To read this entire forum in French (current
language of study) via google translations?

My initial extensive (please set aside a few hours to make your way through this) list of pro's & con's reads
like this:

Pro's:
Exposure/reinforcement to previously studied (in limited contexts) language
New vocab learned

Con's:
Exposure/reinforcement of incorrect translations

Any thoughts?

El Stevenberg
Ahem cough cough, as if u didn't know it was me
Rey de España

2 persons have voted this message useful



PeteP
Newbie
United States
Joined 5035 days ago

27 posts - 48 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Romanian

 
 Message 2 of 17
06 September 2013 at 3:58am | IP Logged 
Google translate more often than not gives comically poor translations.
1 person has voted this message useful



tommus
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5864 days ago

979 posts - 1688 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish

 
 Message 3 of 17
06 September 2013 at 4:32am | IP Logged 
PeteP wrote:
Google translate more often than not gives comically poor translations.

People should never ever make categorical statements!!!

Seriously, Google Translate does amazingly well, especially when translating between major languages, and especially to/from English. Yes, occasionally it will be wrong, even comical, but nevertheless, usually quite helpful. To give more insight into Google Translate, comments should be made with reference to specific language pairs and even the translation direction. I can attest that GT is very good from Dutch into English and reasonable from English into Dutch (as far as I can tell but I am not native-Dutch).

I would say that the best way to use GT is from your target language into your native language. Then you can tell if the translation makes sense, and you can see the correct target language. I use it all the time. That being said, I'm not sure how effective reading all of HTLAL will be. Pretty tedious, at least.


3 persons have voted this message useful



Tsopivo
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4469 days ago

258 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Esperanto

 
 Message 4 of 17
06 September 2013 at 5:35am | IP Logged 
PeterMollenburg wrote:
To read this entire forum in French (current language of study) via google translations?

Sounds like a great plan if you are studying GT EN to FR French. On the other hand, if you are studying FR French, CA French or any other French dialect, I would not recommend it ;-)

(and I say this after having tried to translate your post to French via GT to see what it would look like)



Edited by Tsopivo on 06 September 2013 at 6:01pm

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PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5474 days ago

821 posts - 1273 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: FrenchB1

 
 Message 5 of 17
06 September 2013 at 7:50am | IP Logged 
PeteP wrote:
Google translate more often than not gives comically poor translations.


You're simply making a statement. I'm aware the translations can be poor hence why I'm asking the question
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6701 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 6 of 17
06 September 2013 at 10:07am | IP Logged 
The formulation "more often than not" allows for the possibility that certain Google translations are perfectly OK, but the longer they are the higher the risk is that something comical will occur. Personally I use GT in the direction from a weak to a strong language to make bilingual texts, which saves me a lot of dictionary look-ups without tempting me to learn specific words and formulations in a language where I can't spot the errors. I know the thing well enough not to trust it in the opposite direction. It is not really a question of language pairs because all translations with one possible exception go through English, but translations to and from small languages and the only 'dead' language Latin are especially errorprone because of small samples and the lack of a grammatical 'motor.

For instance English -> Irish completely disregards the rule that the verb should be in the initial position (with just conjunctions and particles allowed before it). I once had to throw a large collection of scientific articles about extremely interesting themes away because it turned out to consist of machine translations - and the word order was the clue that immeditately gave it away, but heaven knows what other errors it could have implanted in me if I had read enough of the stuff.

Edited by Iversen on 07 September 2013 at 5:35am

2 persons have voted this message useful



eyðimörk
Triglot
Senior Member
France
goo.gl/aT4FY7
Joined 4097 days ago

490 posts - 1158 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English, French
Studies: Breton, Italian

 
 Message 7 of 17
06 September 2013 at 10:37am | IP Logged 
tommus wrote:
Seriously, Google Translate does amazingly well, especially when translating between major languages, and especially to/from English.

The key here is major languages, which includes French.

I personally wouldn't read a forum like this one in French with Google Translate to get language exposure, but then I'm a stickler for native sounding text. I won't even read books translated into French, since I remember being a teenager in Sweden and seeing clunky, un-natural sounding, subtitles and translations (even books). If you're less bothered with this kind of thing, though, why not?

I'd definitely make sure only to try this in languages for which Google Translate does a decent job. Google Translate does not do Swedish, for example, remotely well, and when translating from Swedish into English the end result is often a garbled incomprehensible mess. I've experienced this first hand all too often as a freelance translator and copyeditor/proofreader. Clients will come to you with a text that they claim has been translated and now needs checking (1/4 the fee of a translation), but the subject and object are frequently mixed up, sentences lack both subject and predicate, there are words missing (with Swedish, Google Translate often skips words), there are no definite articles, and even if you are a native speaker you have no idea what is being said.
2 persons have voted this message useful



schoenewaelder
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5558 days ago

759 posts - 1197 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 8 of 17
06 September 2013 at 3:33pm | IP Logged 
I think it's an excellent idea, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would be the most
efficient use of your time.

I by the way, always use GT to check my writing before posting on Lang-8, to check I
haven't made too many howlers.

It's funny though, how over a couple of years we've changed from thinking GT was flawed
but almost miraculous, to starting to find it a bit disappointing.

Edited by schoenewaelder on 06 September 2013 at 3:35pm



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