I received a circulate letter written in Chinese, complaining about a life insurance policy. I used Google Translate to translate it into English. I was amazed. Google Translate did the work in a few seconds. The translation was perfect.
I used Google Translate previously to translate from European language to English. This is the first time that I did for Chinese. Wow!
Mr. Tan,
ReplyDeleteActually, GoogleTranslate is not that good.
Say for example, many thanks. When you try to translate it from English to other language, you will know how screwed up is it. I tried translating it to French it came out "Merci beaucoup" (Merci: Thanks; Beaucoup:much) but the actual translation is "Grande Merci". (I have a book that translate these tiny foreign words and that's what it came out)
Back to the issue. The letter that you translated using GoogleTranslate, I think it can give you the rough meaning of the letter but you can never get the whole picture of it. That's not your fault, nor is it GoogleTranslate's. It's just that something will be lost in translation and we might not be able to recover things that are lost during the process.
Chee Meng,
ReplyDeleteI do not expect perfect translation. After getting the translated text, I read through to polish it up. I have to do this editing even with my own writing. So, Google Translate is quite helpful in getting the first cut translation to be polished up.
Mr Tan
ReplyDeleteBut you say "translation was perfect", which is misleading. Cheers.
Thanks. I agree that the statement was careless.
ReplyDeleteGoogle translation would be perfect or at least near perfect word for word mechanically. However, all whom speak more than one language knows that grammar, syntax an context can't be translated mechanically, especially when it comes to language- or culture-specific metaphors and idioms.
ReplyDeleteGoogle translation is a good tool to get a rough translated text jottered quick, but it needs to be polished into context.