Website translating
SpanishDict has a "Translation" link. I accessed the translation service provided and inserted the following text:
"I am inserting the following to test the capability of translating this software. When I translate this into Spanish and back into English, will make sense or it will be incomprehensible'"
I then used the same software to translate the Spanish text back into English. The result was:
I am inserting the following text to prove the capacity that translates of this software. When I translate this to Spanish and again within English, she will have sense or he will be incomprehensible?
It seems that technology is a long way away from being able to poduce a good, gramatically-correct, idiomatically-reasonable translation.
Jonathan
3 Answers
Welcome to the world of machine translation (MT). Fifty or sixty years ago, the assumption was that the the solution to MT was faster/more powerful computers. Since then we have come to realize that the the main problem is that we (humans) do not really understand how languages work. We can formulate rules that explain many (simple) cases but which fail in many specific cases. People can learn to translate between languages but are often unable to explain why they choose a particular translation.
Computer (programs) rely on (simple) rules for their behavior. If the language experts cannot come up with simple rules for translation, the programmers cannot provide the simple instructions that computers require.
We did not actually design any translation software on our own. That is a gigantic undertaking. We do, however, offer the top three web translators all in one place so you can compare the results and hopefully pick and choose from all three.
Tiene mucho razón. A mí, las traducciones computerizadas son útiles de vez en cuando para recordarme de términos que no he usado por un largo rato.
