Perhaps this is just me, but on the occaisions I've had to resort to the new low of using Babel Fish to attempt to translate something, it's come up with a mostly incomprehendable bunch of text that makes absolutely no sense.
I've been painstakingly writing a small french letter to someone the last few days,and thought it was pretty okay.. for tha lulz I typed it into Babel Fish.. and babel fish in turn spewed out this mass of nonsensical words and strange symbols.

I'm.. so ..confused..



So what do you lot think of Babel Fish? Quite effective? Stupidly incorrect and clumsy?

All instant translators are shit.

Realy, really shit.

It's because online translators really pretty much just dictionary translate every word like a dictionary. They haven't reached the level of reasoning human translators use in translating entire concepts and phrases

Babel Fish Translation http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/av/i/bf/fish-right.gif Help (http://av.rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9ibyOe6ISdIhDIAoCOICqMX;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NmZqZGZ pBHNlYwNidHh0/SIG=11nt60u2u/**http%3a//www.altavista.com/help/babelfish/babel_help)

Il est parce que le dictionnaire vraiment assez beaucoup juste en ligne de traducteurs traduisent chaque mot comme un dictionnaire. Ils n'ont pas atteint le niveau de l'utilisation humaine de traducteurs de raisonnement en traduisant des concepts et des expressions entiers

I think Google translator does an okay job. Far from perfect but when I've used the "Translate Page" option on google, the result is usually intelligible.

Whay Zay says. They're completely unreliable, unless you use it to translate a single word.

Whole texts always get fucked up.

Google translate is the best online translator - by far.
They use phrases now rather than individual words to translate and, although it makes mistakes, if you are good at the language but you just can't be bothered, you just need to go through and check for mistakes.
Works every time - teacher has never caught me :D

Vhy do ze amerikans hier allvays telling me to 'kiss their donkey'???!

All translators are shit.

Language is all about context, and online translators translate word by word.

P
I've been painstakingly writing a small french letter to someone the last few days

You want to rephrase , dear?

You want to rephrase , dear?

Possibly?

It's never fun to confuse a french kiss with a glasgow kiss, so perhaps I've written something there that's hysterical ..in some way.

Google translate is the best online translator - by far.
They use phrases now rather than individual words to translate and, although it makes mistakes, if you are good at the language but you just can't be bothered, you just need to go through and check for mistakes.
Works every time - teacher has never caught me :D

Last year all translators messed up the verbs. Google now only messes it up some of the time.