chinoise

Rather than making the life of a translator easier, I'd suspect it would replace a translator, as I've just read a thread on this forum about a request for a translator in Bangalore, and a reply suggested a translation software. At the same time, with the fastly growing internet community, geography means nothing, and resulting in the increasing drop of translator pay, aggravated by the extortion of translator agencies. Ironically, if you want to study translation in a university in HK, you have to spend a fortune. I doubt if a poor translator can earn back the school fees she has paid.

marielameche

My mum studied translation and interpretation about 30 years ago At the time, she and her fellow students were told that there would soon be no work for them because of automatic translators... It's not the case yet, and I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon either

gigi

Don't worry, i agree with the rest. It will be a pretty long time till translators will be replaced. For example, not all expressions in all languages r covered from dictionaries and/or databases(translation soft. is based on those). And believe me that's a hard one.

chinoise

Thanks, Marielameche and Gigi. I'm not worried now , except when linguists and translators are involved in developing the automatic translators.

anything

Hay,

could I explain this way? courtesy of freetranslation.com:

English to 'French'

Bonjour,

Vous probablement vous êtes rendu compte par maintenant que cette machine est incapable de livrer un message précis. J'ai écrit ceci dans l'anglais aisé mais l'informatique n'a pas reproduit la grammaire de accute et les règles linguistiques qui sont vitaux à français. Si vous pouvez comprendre ce message, mes félicitations mais vous parlez probablement le bon anglais aussi si vous devez tranlsate les MOTS de français pour faire le sens dans l'anglais avant de le retourner à votre (très difficile) la langue. J'espère que vous avez apprécié me détruisant cette crédibilité de sites web et avoir quelque amusement en même temps.

All francaphones may have a chance with this jumble but for everyone else I can summarise, having a machine produce a translation is no substitute for exploring the language. I also want to apologise to all the French out there for this website messing up your lanuage,

enjoy

chinoise

The above looks just like my French writing, translating from English to French. Btw, I tried the freetranslation.com, typed 5 Chinese words as a try and received a quotation of US$49.95 (min charge). I'm sure all the Chinese translators on this website will be very interested in getting such a quotation!

Jean Fred

I couldn't agree more with you all. Automatic translation programs may work when subjects are technical ( with some human additional touch), because technical knowledge itself governs understanding, so translation is just putting different words on concepts, things, phenomena that are already known well
in terms of both definition and functiunality.Works in closed circuit with little free intrusion from outside.
But translating a novel, a play or simply a love letter is coplng with non predetermined, unexpected signals in meaning and in intensity.
Yes translators shouldn't be pessimistic and remember , even technical discussion will always require translators's skills.
A few years ago an experiment was conducted that consisted in asking a computer to translate from english into russian, then from russian into french, and finally from french into english the following sentence pronounced by Jesus :
"Spirit is prompt but flesh is weak"
After a few clicks and purrs the final print out was reading :
"Alcohol is strong but meat is advanced"

Love.