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A New Google Dictionary  (View post)

Daniel Garcia [PersonRank 6]

Friday, June 22, 2007
17 years ago8,264 views

http://translate.google.com/translate_dict?q=dog&sa=N&hl=en&langpair=en%7Ces

Also have:

Related languages
dog is also a word in: Deutsch Italiano

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Really fun, but I think I will still use WordReference

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Leo!

pokemo [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

too bad...no english --> chinese translator

INFORMANT [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I suspect that they will continue to experience problems with the German language beta. Because of their reliance on a 7+ ngram model, they will be unable to effectively work with German (in German, a verb might be the 16th word in a sentence, often at the end or last 3gram section) – until they can scale computing power and work with models of such scale, they'll be stuck offering this mediocre tool.

AN [PersonRank 3]

17 years ago #

"Es regnete toll?" Wo redet man denn so?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

AN, never heard of that expression either :)

Elias Kai [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Try the numbers and see how it can give you localized examples and definition meanings.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

*While it failed in the new dictionary, "dogs" works in Google's old text translate box though (and returns "Hunde")...

amski [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Philipp, one of the meanings in British English of to go to the dogs is to go to watch the greyhound races, so the translation works. The engine doesn't look terribly useful as yet though

zmarties [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Returning a word that means "greyhound racing" to translate "dogs" is perfectly valid English, for example in the phrases

"He spent the evening at the dogs"

or

"Dogs represent a gambling industry worth millions of pounds".

Yes, its far from the best translation, but it is a perfectly valid translation.

zmarties [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Ah – I see that whilst I fought the forum software to get it to accept my post, amski gave essentially the same info I did!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

While that might explain why Google translated this the way they did, IMO it's still a bug, because Google returned "greyhound racing" as single top result. What they should do instead is to offer the best result first, and more specific results later on (and they should also use a mixed American/ British English database when determining the most popular meaning for a word).

The same bug appears when I enter "Hunde" and select German -> English. Google now tells me the translation is "go to the dogs," which is wrong (because that would only be the proverb "vor die Hunde gehen", which Google does print out for reference, but that is useless to someone who doesn't speak German... and those are the people using this translator in the first place). "Hunde" without context would correctly be translated to "dogs".

When I use the old "translate text" Google translator, I get exactly what I'd say is the single top answer, by the way: "dogs" -> "Hunde", and "Hunde" -> "dogs".

Maybe the new dictionary has additional troubles with plurals, though other things I tried were singular and still returned weird stuff. Unfortunately if the German – English translation is like the other language pairs, then this is exactly the kind of dictionary I'd stay away from when I actually wanted to translate a word into a language I don't speak. And except for proverbs, it's worse than the "translate text" functionality (or the existing LEO dictionary) at least with the limited words I've tested...

Zim [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

It has some bugs, anyway...
It says "the dog and the b*tch" is "el perro y la perra" in spanish; but taken out of context, the spanish phrase means "the dog [male] and the dog [female]" so it's not completly useful.
But they'll improve it... (I hope)

Gerald Deutsch [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

don't want to lecture you Phillip but the proverb "vor die Hunde gehen" does not mean "go to the dogs" even by a far stretch. Actually "vor die Hunde gehen" literally means "to die" when used regarding a person or a group and, well, English is not my native tongue, you'll find a better translation, I'm sure, something along the lines of "to detoriate or to be on its way down" when used in conjunction with any other concept (das Land geht vor die Hunde – the country is on its way down). Just to be aware that Germans might give you seriously concerned looks, when you tell them "Ich gehe vor die Hunde" :-)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> don't want to lecture you Phillip but the
> proverb "vor die Hunde gehen" does not mean "go to the dogs"
> even by a far stretch.

According to TheFreeDictionary.com and Answer.com, it does, Gerald:

<<go to the dogs
To go to ruin; degenerate.>>
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/go+to+the+dogs

<<go to the dogs. Deteriorate, decline; come to a bad end>>
http://www.answers.com/go+to+the+dogs

I'm a native German speaker, by the way, so yes I can confirm, "vor die Hunde gehen" does mean "to go to ruin; degenerate."

Gerald Deutsch [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Phillip, I'm native German speaker as well – no disagreement regarding the German part. I would connect the English phrase "to go to the dogs" rather with "to go to the dog races" and was not aware of the meaning you've quoted. But I'm happy and grateful to anybody helping me to lower my level of ignorance, so thx and enjoy the rest of this Sunday. All the best from Amsterdam, g

John Connolly [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

My pennies worth:
I would have said that "to go to the dogs" meaning in English will depend not only on which English speaking country your in but also the socio-economic class that you belong to.

Dog racing i.e. greyhounds is a distinctly English working class pursuit so if you say "He's going to the dogs." in South London then I would think 90% of people would understand it as going to a greyhound racing meet.

Said anywhere else with a UK heritage, i.e. USA, NZ etc or the Uk outside of working class circles the meaning would be taken as "vor die Hunde gehen"

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Though whatever "to go to the dogs" means, it's still wrong for Google to present this figure of speech when I enter "Hunde" and translate from German -> English*....because the German "Hunde" is not a figure of speech and it means neither "to go to the dogs" nor "greyhound racing".

* http://translate.google.com/translate_dict?q=hunde&sa=N&hl=en&langpair=de%7Cen

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