Automatic translators

I choosed to split this topic, as it was inserted in a OBE/LD topic… and I would like to give my opinion about automatic translators without breaking the ongoing discussion off ! :tongue:

You could always use a translator, like the one on www.altavista.com :smile: I used that for French assignments in grade 9 and got 90’s!! Shhh…

I thought those things didn’t really work all that well.
I’ll give it a try anywyas if I haven’t any luck on my own.

Thanks :smile:

Meh. You should get the gist of it!

Hello, my name is Josh and I like to juggle fish that are on fire while riding my unicycle.

Bonjour, mon nom est Josh et j’aime jongler les poissons qui sont sur le feu tout en montant mon unicycle.

Well, looks like it works quite well after all :content:

Haha. Told ya. :wink: They’ve come a long way since grade 9… (7 years ago?)

Heh heh, only 5 years for me. This is my first year out of high school. I love it :smile:

Ofcourse French class was never my strong subject :tongue:

Anyways, sorry for getting off topic.

Hmmm… I’m supposing your teacher was using the same translator! :tongue:
Automatic translations give generally pitiful results.

Bonjour, mon nom est Josh”. It makes sense, but french people would say: “je m’appelle Josh”. For instance: “Bonjour, je m’appelle Bond, James Bond.” :lol:

et j’aime jongler les poissons qui sont sur le feu”. There is a error: we don’t say “jongler les poissons”, but “jongler avec des poissons”. Then, “qui sont sur le feu” means “which are on the stove”. In English, I suppose it means they are burning, in flames. :eh:

tout en montant mon unicycle.” The verb “monter” is for a horse. “riding a bicycle” = “faire du vélo”.

Thus the litteral translation would be, IMO: “Bonjour, je m’appelle Josh et j’aime jongler avec des poissons en flammes tout en faisant de l’unicycle.”… which, translated again with Google language tools, gives: “Hello, I am called Josh and I like to juggle with fish in flames while making unicycle.” :rofl:

But does “juggle fish that are on fire” mean something special in English? Is it an idiomatic expression? :confused:

:rofl: No, he was just being silly :rofl:

Nah, I just wanted to write something completely rediculous to try to throw off the translator :content:
Do you speak French Basilus West?

LOL!! If you’re going to use a translator, you have to have a general idea of whether the translation is correct, or incorrect. I have used a few online for German class and most of them are pathetic pieces of crap. I have found Google to be the best so far, however. I always wanted to take French but supposedly our school didn’t have a teacher for it the year that I was to take it. (Even though the foreign language teacher had gone over to Chad during the summer and taught the French how to speak English… :eh:)

Heh heh, by the way, you should hear the French they speak around here :content:
They call it Franglais, mostly really robust French with English mixed in, it’s easy to undertsnad for me because of all the English nouns they throw in :smile:

I’m French. :smile:

LOL! I searched and found a canadian page about franglais, it’s incredible! :rofl: As for us, the term Franglais exists too, but it means mixing terms that most people thinks to be English but often aren’t, like “les waters” (for toilets), “le parking” (for a car park), “des chips” (for crisps), etc. So you’ll find it far more difficult to understand! :tongue:

Rather than take out a dictionary in Spanish class I went to thesaurus.com, has a really bad translator but it’s something.