Thread: On-line translators - a guilty habit?

Alright, we all know that on-line translators are rubbish. They make grammatical mistakes that even I can see are wrong, and if a word has two possible meanings then they are bound to get the wrong one.

But is anyone prepared to admit to using one?

Go on, be brave. Just now and then, when you're tired and the kids are playing Star Wars by your chair and you just can't be bothered to get your dictionary out and make a proper job of it? If so, which ones do you use?

I have been using http://translation2.paralink.com/lowres.asp, to spell- and grammar-check my work, and give me a rough idea of what a passage means before I start to translate it. Its main drawback is that it can only cope with a paragraph of text at a time. It would be nice to be able to feed a whole draft e-mail in at once and get it all spell and grammar checked at once. Are there any (slightly) better ones out there?

Originally Posted by rainbowworrier

Alright, we all know that on-line translators are rubbish. They make grammatical mistakes that even I can see are wrong, and if a word has two possible meanings then they are bound to get the wrong one.

But is anyone prepared to admit to using one?

Go on, be brave. Just now and then, when you're tired and the kids are playing Star Wars by your chair and you just can't be bothered to get your dictionary out and make a proper job of it? If so, which ones do you use?

I have been using http://translation2.paralink.com/lowres.asp, to spell- and grammar-check my work, and give me a rough idea of what a passage means before I start to translate it. Its main drawback is that it can only cope with a paragraph of text at a time. It would be nice to be able to feed a whole draft e-mail in at once and get it all spell and grammar checked at once. Are there any (slightly) better ones out there?

I've been also using http://translation2.paralink.com for a long time but not long ago Google added a service, still in beta phase, to translate Russian into English and you can enter much bigger texts:

http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en and choose from the drop down menu or choose to translate a whole website.

I hope it helps,

C

I use Alta Vista Babel Fish when Russians ICQ me with those funny letters. Not quite Cyrillic... I'm sure you have seen them.

Yes, I occasionally use an on-line translator. No, I do not feel guilty about it - I do not feel guilty about using a Russian/English Dictionary either! I will use any tool that will help me learn the language.

Originally Posted by rainbowworrier

Alright, we all know that on-line translators are rubbish. They make grammatical mistakes that even I can see are wrong, and if a word has two possible meanings then they are bound to get the wrong one.

But is anyone prepared to admit to using one?

Go on, be brave. Just now and then, when you're tired and the kids are playing Star Wars by your chair and you just can't be bothered to get your dictionary out and make a proper job of it? If so, which ones do you use?

Ха, а что же тут стесняться-то? Все зависит от цели. Я держу Лингво 9.0 и мне часто помогает. Еще сайты с urban slang, незаменимая вещь и т.п. А словарь - это очень консервативно. Здесь в России дешевые словари представляют собой халтуру с пропусками целых групп важных слов.

Не халтура это, а направленность на определённую аудиторию. Нормальные словари на развалах не продают — по такой цене их никто не купит.

Here is the translator I use http://www.freetranslation.com/

I generally use it as a spelling and grammar checker.
Don't use it to translate English to Russian. It works better when you guess at the Russian and see if it translates properly to English.