9 messages over 2 pages: 1 2 Next >>
pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5488 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 1 of 9 15 January 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged |
Great map for language lovers published by the Guardian.
It's not perfect, it uses Google Translate and covers only Europe, but it's good fun.
European Word Translator
15 persons have voted this message useful
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4013 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian
| Message 2 of 9 15 January 2014 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
Finnish and Estonian translations were off right in the first things I tried. I guess the IE languages are more accurate.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6357 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 3 of 9 15 January 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged |
HTLAL'ers started playing around and the google translate quota was exceeded...
1 person has voted this message useful
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5865 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish
| Message 4 of 9 15 January 2014 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
Just when I thought I'd got my wanderlust under control, this comes along!!
Dziękuję pesahson :)
2 persons have voted this message useful
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4118 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew
| Message 5 of 9 15 January 2014 at 9:34pm | IP Logged |
This is fun!
c'est amusant
это весело
Bu eğlenceli
Αυτό είναι διασκέδαση (baaad greek translation...I don't know about the rest)
1 person has voted this message useful
| Γρηγόρη Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4215 days ago 55 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English*, Greek, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: German, French, Russian
| Message 6 of 9 16 January 2014 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
The map is only as good as Google Translate, which tends to be more woodenly literal for certain languages. So,
for example, if you try "My name is…," it returns the literal, but awkward translation το όνομά μου είναι for
Greek, but the idiomatic and correct translation меня зовут… for Russian. Even for big Western European
languages like French and German it returns Mon nom est… and Mein Name ist…, rather than Je m'appelle… or
Ich heiße…
Also, note that it is advertised as a "Word Translator," and doesn't even allow more than a few characters of input.
I find it particularly interesting to see the distribution of "international" words, especially those languages that do
not use a word that is almost universal across the continent.
Here are some of the most common international words and the few languages that use some other term:
"culture": only Greek, Icelandic, Welsh
"passport": only Croation, Greek, Icelandic, Slovenian
"university": only Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Welsh
"telephone": only Finnish, Icelandic, Latvian (Welsh dros y ffôn seems to be halfway there)
"museum": only Icelandic and Welsh
"cafe": with some allowance for "coffeehouse" or some other formation based on "coffee", this is universal.
"banana": only Basque, Catalan, Spanish( which all call it some version of "platano"), and Turkish (muz, borrowed
from Persian or Arabic?)
"restaurant": only Basque, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic
I suspect that most of these can be attributed to language engineering, i.e. deliberately creating native words to
replace loanwords, especially in Greek, Icelandic, and Welsh, which are disproportionately represented.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| MestreTites Hexaglot Newbie United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3731 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Catalan*, English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French
| Message 7 of 9 17 January 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
This is so misleading...
1 person has voted this message useful
| Indíritheach Senior Member United States Joined 3805 days ago 108 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Irish, French
| Message 8 of 9 17 January 2014 at 10:00pm | IP Logged |
Well, I'm just glad they didn't leave out Irish! :)
2 persons have voted this message useful
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