The Polyglot Project (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

The Polyglot Project
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

wharrgarbl
Newbie
United States
Joined 5845 days ago
27 posts - 36 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 1 of 2

20 March 2011 at 6:46am | IP Logged

http://www.polyglotproject.com/

Literature in various languages where you can double click on any word to have it translated for you. Seems like a great idea, though the selection is a bit limited at the moment. I also don't know how good the translations are or even where they come from, as I just discovered the site and haven't really investigated much. What does everyone think? And sorry if this has been posted before.
1 person has voted this message useful

Doitsujin
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5321 days ago
1256 posts - 2363 votes

Speaks: German*, English

Message 2 of 2

20 March 2011 at 8:29am | IP Logged

It seems that all they did is format some fee Project Gutenberg books and prepare them for Google Translation lookup.

For example, the Brothers Grimm fairytale "Godfather Death" contains the following paragraph:

Quote:

»Du hast mich hinter das Licht geführt, diesmal will ich dir's nachsehen, weil du mein Pate bist, aber wagst du das noch einmal, so geht dir's an den Kragen, und ich nehme dich selbst mit fort.«

which has been translated in the Project Gutenberg English version as:

Quote:

"You have betrayed me. I will overlook it this time because you are my godson, but if you dare to do it again, it will cost you your neck, for I will take you yourself away with me."

But if you select, for example, "geht" in the German version, you get "is" as a translation proposal, which doesn't make any sense at all. Same with "fort," which is translated as "continued."

You could basically achieve the same thing by downloading the ePUB version from Project Gutenberg and reading it with Firefox with the Globefish plug-in. And since Project Gutenberg has a much larger selection this makes this website pretty much useless.

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