A really clever toy

[Andrew MacLean]

Now that I can see a bit better, I have started to explore my computer to find out what it can do. I discovered that it can translate English into Chinese, so I got it to tell me the (Simplified Han) Chinese for Don't Panic. Then I copied and pasted into WordArt to create a jpg and hey presto, my new signature image!

I know that to all you wizzards this is very unimpressive, but I am not really sure how to turn on my box of lights, so this is a real milestone for me!

Andrew

[Sarah M]

I'm very impressed!

[GarethB]

My wife does this at work,

Convert to another language and then back to English.

Some simple everyday British sayings once translated back to English can come back quite strange and some have been quite rude!

[Andrew MacLean]

I changd ti to japanese!

I did that thing that Gareth suggested with Korean

Don't Panic to Korean and back to English

"It does not panic to dry".

The problem is that the computer is trying to translate not just words but Idioms. As a moderatly talented linguist I can tell you that this is a problem that people have, too.

Human translators have to work hard to be true to an original text and render the same meaning in a different language.

Andrew

[Sarah M]

Andrew,

I am doubley impressed at u. A talented linguist - what languages do u speak

[Andrew MacLean]

The usual classical languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew. I read Sanskrit and some Pali. I speak French, Swedish (I understand Danish and new Norwegian but I respond in Swedish), and German. I have a little Spanish (Castilian), enough to get by in most circumstances, but not necessarily to read a Spanish Novel (although I do plan to reas some Cervantes this summer, if my sight will allow).

From childhood, I have retained some Pharsee, and I have a little Italian, enough to get by in social situations, but not in Academic circles.

Andrew

[Louise Pembroke]

Sanskrit, I'm seriously impressed Andrew.

I could do a bark/whine/growl for each letter of the alphabet and if someone recorded it and had speech activated software you could then type in dog..

[Andrew MacLean]

Part of the problem of translating ancient languages is to know where the word break ought to come: most ancient texts are written in unborken script.

Then, once you decide where the words break, the next problem is to decide how to punctuate the text.

Here is a little example of how hard this can be:

womanwithouthermanisuseless

Let us say, for the sake of argument that we break this up to read

woman without her man is useless

Now for the pucntuation

Woman without, her man is useless.

has a quite different meaning to

Woman, without her, man is useless.
or
Woman, without her man, is useless.

Now, say we have to translate this simple sentence into French.

I'd translate "Woman, without her, man is useless". "La femme, sans elle, l'homme est inutile."

But, I'd translate "Woman, without her man, is useless" as "La femme, sans son homme, est inutile." If this was the opening sentence of a chapter, then the rest of the chapter would be guided by this opening statement: but what is it that is being said?

This is why language is such good fun! I remember in the days of the old cold War there was a big conference at Helsinki. The buzz word in those days was "Detante". The BBC had a reporter outside the conference hotel, and he had just discovered that there was no word in the Russian Language for "Detante". In announcing this fact to the world, he seemed casually unaware of the fact that there was no word in the English language for it either; that is why we use the French word!



Sorry, I tend to go on a bit about language and the meanings of words.


Andrew

[Louise Pembroke]

Very interesting though

[Vic]

Ah I love linguistics