- From: CE Whitehead <cewcathar@hotmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 10:56:59 -0400
- To: w3c-translators@w3.org
- Cc: www-international@w3.org
Systrans is getting more like Google neither does impersonal pronouns properly! * * * Example 1: Original (French) text: "Il va pleuvoir le dimanche, n'est pas? A-t-il quelque chose que je peux faire?" Systrans: "It will rain Sunday, is not? Does it have something which I can do?" Google: "It will rain Sunday, is not? Does it have something which I can do?" (I would translate the sentence as: "It's going to rain Sunday, right? Is there anything I can do?") * * * How are these now the same? There are two different systems as I understand them anyway. Systrans I thought was using a system where it indexed words with things they went with, for example books you'd link to 'write' 'publish' etc; Google I thought was using a system where it compared translations with originals (I wonder, does it search through documents online since google is a search engine and look for translations and compare these with the originals?) and then was 'learning the rules' (thus learning errors too I suppose when things are translated erroneously--but I think perhaps that things are translated correctly more often than wrong so google can count frequency too; I'm not sure what it does about this???) * * * Example 2-3 Original Text: "S'il est impossible que quelque chose se passe, a-t-il des cas où il est possible qu'elle se passe?" Translating English > French (from the French sentence above, by Systrans and Google, both again translating identically!) "Le quelque impossible de que d'est de S'il a choisi le passe de Se, passe possible de Se de qu'elle d'est d'il d'où de DES cas d'a-t-il ?" Translating French > English (google and Systrans again the same!) "If it is impossible that something occurs, does it have cases where it is possible that it occurs?" (I'd translate the above, French > English, as "If it is impossible that something will happen, are there cases where it is possible that it will happen" but it's my French I'm translating so the original may not sound perfectly native but I think it's o.k.) (When I taught classes in linguistics and ESL, I did see some students' papers where neighbors had identical mistakes in grammar, spelling, identical wrong answers; you have to have the neighbors sit apart the next time they take an exam; or else you have to create activities where friends can work together and help each other and still learn; or else you have to ask students to leave the room when they talk or exchange papers during an exam -- I guess. But does anyone know what is going on with SysTrans and google and also exactly how google translates??? Thanks.) --C. E. Whitehead cewcathar@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Play games, earn tickets, get cool prizes. Play now–it's FREE! http://club.live.com/home.aspx?icid=CLUB_hotmailtextlink1
Received on Friday, 8 June 2007 14:57:15 UTC