Thursday, October 25, 2007

Language, Google and Translation Difficulties

This is just a small test to see whether the new Google translation program really is good enough to make sense of an article rüberzubringen. I write these words on German lines to them through the translator to infiltrate. Sometimes I go expecting that the basic phrases like “The tree has three apples” better translated as metaphors such as “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

The Forum said one of you – his name is “informant” – the Google specifically with the German sentence structure problems. Why? Because the German keywords of a sentence often appear only at the end, so informant. Ich hab ’which has often heard for example Abroad ... The German “horse from behind aufzäunen”, so complex grammar and build sets, as it is the complexity of the issue would require. I got no idea whether the Vote – each of us is actually almost caught in its language, and it has a lot simpler, the languages of other analysis.

To me someone who is learning German just wondering why this or that word now so altered or so in this or that context ( “he went, he goes, it was gone, they will go, go ’no, we geh’n ? “), I can often find no direct answer. We know it’s intuitive, because it is so small child, has learned.

Because you can almost be happy if in a complicated language grammatically born, as it were, because it gets done. Children synapses build up so much faster (I once heard that the brain only two or dramatic change in the life of learning, etc.; Even during the early-age child, and a second time during puberty; That would mean that much of what we later in life such provision, also of the two phases is characterized). However, is there really different degrees of difficulty in languages? Many people say: “My language has a much higher fine nuanced vocabulary!” (For example French, or Chinese). But I have already people with different mother tongues rises say – perhaps may be one of its language say!

The German can be practical about any two words aneindersetzen to Wortz a new one. It looks often complicated – “World Health Organization” – but it is not. Take for example, the previous example to stay the tree with apples. Plus apple tree shows together apple tree, and already we have a new word. That can now expand with “Pflücker” to the word Apfelbaumpflücker. Every German will immediately understand this word (with the trend in German rather dahingeht such words to “atomize”, she also referred to the English model in its individual parts to dismantle – out of Apfelbaum-Pflücker zim “Apfelbaum Pflücker” which language Interested then often with “Depp’s blanks” to dub). In China, there are very similar phenomena – the computer in China is the “electric brain” ( “dian nao” in Pinyin-transcription), to name just one example.

Google, and all other automatic translation programs are also interesting still in progress at the beginning of the usefulness scale. This test may reinforce the impression or not (the result still yes, I know not). If one day translation programs, however, are so good that they are in almost all cases, the sense – and the grammar, etc. – across perfectly, the question remains open whether cultural misunderstandings about this rather small ... , Or greater.

To explain: If I hand plane to Tokyo and then to take a business hereingehe and speak broken English, the Japanese realized that I probably from the local culture did not understand. He also would like to see one or the other faux pas. But when I enter the same business, and speak perfect Japanese? The Japanese would therefore now assume that the culture I also know well – how else could I use the language! The apology “ignorant foreigners” can no longer be applied, and one or the other thing I would say, would perhaps as an insult (with possible further consequences) so.

In the future, however, may be exactly what will happen – we take ourselves a translation program to for example An e-mail or a blog commentary to write in the hope that our intention will be heard. But behind every language is just a little more than grammar and vocabulary; A culture. When the Google translation program in 2025 show a warning message when we are in just such a faux pas to celebrate? A warning for the purposes of; “Attention – although it is hereby sentence correctly translated, but he could be the one or other unwanted side effect, though it directly in this form of use!”

Language, Google and Tran ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (16)

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