h a l f b a k e r yI think, therefore I am thinking.
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This idea embodies some of the elements and spirit of
the
other two (so far) ideas in this subsubcategory, but is a
bit
different.
Automatic translation is now good enough to be a widely
useful tool, but it will be a long(ish) time before it's
good
enough to handle all the subtleties
and idioms of most
languages.
A good test of whether your text will translate well is to
try
translating it into your target language and back. The
results are often disturbing ("I desire the Poles
carnally."),
but they do make it easy to see which aspects of your
writing
are causing difficulty for the software.
Suggestions have been made for "partial" translators, or
for
software which parses the source text
so
that you can get an idea of how the translation software
might struggle. But the parsing problem is part of the
problem itself.
At the present stage, only a human can really interpret
the
subtleties of their own language.
I therefore suggest that online translators have, in
addition
to the "From" language and "To" language windows, a
"There
and back again" window, which shows you the back-
translation of your text as you type.
So, you type "I love the Polish people and, by the way,
I'm a
Berliner", and you see "I want to have sex with the
people of
Poland, and, next to the road, I'm a jelly doughnut."
Immediately, you can spot what has gone wrong, and
adjust
your English until the back-translation makes some kind
of
sense. You're not dependent on the computer or, rather,
you
are depending on it to do only what it already does - sort
of
man and machine in perfect halfmony.
Of course, the translation errors you see could be caused
in the "There" or the "Back" translation, and some errors
will happen in the "There" but be undone in the "Back".
But if you eliminate the errors by rephrasing, it's at least
more likely that your translated text will make sense to
the Pole.
You can do this already, of course, with some slice-n-
previousing, but it's tedious and not in real-time.
I hope you want to have sex with this idea, and I look
forward
to taking delivery of moons.
Kinda Like This...
Translated-Retransl...0Movie_20Soundtrack
[Grogster, Nov 20 2011]
Find equilibrium with Translation Party
http://translationparty.com/#9970505
through Japanese, as BunsenHoneydew requested. [calum, Nov 23 2011]
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Annotation:
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I think it's a great idea. I really did what you suggest to manually copy and paste style. Here (English Russian to English) bun! |
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Yes, I like this. I've also been thinking recently
about the problems of presenting work in English
to an international audience. When meetings are
held in English between a lot of different kinds of
non-English-speakers, the native English speaker is
sometimes at a disadvantage. This is because all
the non-English-speakers are speaking the same,
simplified, "international English" whereas the
native English speaker cannot help lapsing into a
more complex "native English" and thus is not so
easily understood by everyone else. I think this
translate tool is really checking that the input
conforms to "international English".
That's
not to say, however, that native English speakers
should not use the full beauty and richness of
their native language when abroad. There are
about 400m native English speakers but about 2bn
learning it as a second language, so the native
English speaker is providing a useful service to
others by using English abroad wherever possible. |
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//English speaker is providing a useful service to others by using English abroad wherever possible// |
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Maybe. Generally I find that when I forgetfully say "ditto" in reply to what someone else has said...it is virtually 100% guaranteed to baffle anyone whose second language is English. Oh, and "I've lost my rubber" and "I'm dying for a fag" also might not go down too well in other versions of English... |
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// so the native English speaker is providing a
useful service to others by using English abroad// |
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Well, this native English speaker provided a useful
service today. I'm in Malaysia at the moment and
(I swear I am not making this up) the hotel I'm at
is home to the crew and actors making a movie
about Vikings. In Malaysia. I don't mean they're
making a movie about {Vikings in Malaysia}
because that would be silly. They're making a
{movie about Vikings} in Malaysia, which of course
makes much more sense. |
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The cast of this made-in-Malaysia Viking epic (to
be called Vikingdom. Yes, I know.) are variously
English, American and Chinese-Irish. |
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So, I got talking to this American guy who studied
literature and is now an actor. He wanted to talk
about accents, because he's decided that an
American actor in a film about Vikings shot in
Malaysia should have an English accent. I did what
little I could to help. |
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I also met Thor (not the actual god, you
understand, but the person who will be Thor in
Vikingdom). Thor is about six-foot-two, in all
dimensions, and is an East End lad. So he needed
no assistance with the English accent, and I'm
pretty sure that Thor from Larnden will make as
good a Viking as anyone. |
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None of this is really relevant to the present
discussion, but it's very rarely that something
happens to me which is actually as bizarre as if I
had made it up, and it seemed a shame to keep it
to myself. |
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//something happens to me which is actually as
bizarre as if I had made it up// Glad to see you
preserve the distinction. Keep taking the
tablets. |
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Thank you for the anecdote, and please inform us,
should you learn of it, when the movie is
released. |
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As for the idea itself, it's an empirical question,
innit, whether iteratively adjusting your English
until the
back-translation makes some kind of sense would
converge on a stable solution or not. But it's an
*interesting* empirical question. [+] |
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I think the word is "discharged" rather than
"released". It's already got an entry on IMDb - just
look for "Vikingdom". (The title looks in need of an
exclamation mark, but I don't think the budget runs
to one.) |
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I think that should be "vi kingdom" - a utopian
society established and run according to the
principles of the popular Unix text editor. |
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// "vi kingdom" - a utopian society established and
run according to the principles of the popular Unix
text editor.// Or, equally, kingdom.vi, a slightly
different utopian
society organized by means of the popular graphical
automation programming language. In either case it
would be Bluetooth compatible. |
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[hippo] That deserves to be elaborated upon,
perhaps in a separate idea. What would those
principles be? First thing that springs to mind is a
Two Minutes Hate ("We have always been at war with
Emacs"). |
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Vikingdom of the Norse is obviously a there and back
translation of "My kingdom for a horse", probably in an East
End accent. |
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There seems to be only one major culture which is
not represented in this movie. Vikingdom? Vinot? |
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//it's very rarely that something happens to me which is actually as bizarre as if I had made it up// |
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Quite often, I send emails to people in other jurisdictions where they speak a language is not English. The difficulty lies in getting ready sometimes relatively thin gap in the legislation which can have a major impact on the client's interests. <English->Danish->English>. |
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So, it seem that this might help (notwithstanding that "legislation" is significantly narrower than the originally-typed "law" and could itself lead to confusion or, more alarmingly for my firm's professional indemnity policy, errors in advice). But being aware that I was going to twice-process the text, I was in formulating the above significantly more deliberate in my word choice and sentence contruction than I normally am. This is good training. Perhaps, then, the utility of this idea is not on a webpage but as a feature of a word processor or email client (cutting and pasting and opening of windows being a relative trachle), whereby what the author types is translated there and back again on the fly, the twice-processed words appearing on the page. |
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For the purposes of comparison only, the immediately preceding paragraph, which was written using my more typical logorrhoea approach, when translated there and back again reads:
"So it seems that this may help (whether that "law" is far less than the originally-written "law" and even could lead to confusion, or more alarming for my company's professional liability policies, errors in counseling). But being aware that I had to double-process the text, I was in the formula above, significantly more aware of my word choice and sentence construction than I normally have. It's good training. Perhaps because the applicability of this idea is not on a website, but as part of a word processor or e-mail client (cutting and pasting and opening windows to be a relatively trachle) whereby what the author types are translated forward and back on the fly, appearing twice on processed words on the page"
which supports the principle that this approach to writing should increase clarity for second-language readers and might result in better, cleaner prose from the writer. |
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[calum] you forgot the "This does not constitute legal advice. No liability is accepted blah blah blah ..." disclaimer from your annotation. |
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What is really required, in the case of mistranslations, is not a 'There & Back' window but a 'Speak louder & more slowly' button. |
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//the native English speaker is providing a useful service to others by using English abroad wherever possible.//
Especially the ones who speak it in a raised voice, accompanied by gestures. |
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English-Danish-English? Try Japanese and back again. |
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As I have suggested that you are trying again in Japan, [BunsenHoneydew]. We have a machine translator what appears in this configuration. |
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By the way, is indeed pretty annoying to have to keep swapping back and forth between languages and to check whether it is happening. |
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[mouseposture]'s conjecture: if you keep this up
long enough, the text becomes "Da-da da-da da-da
...." (If proved, it'll be a lemma to Moorcock's
thorem: "All art aspires to the condition of
Muzac."
Namely, "All language aspires to the condition of
Tzara.") |
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Unfortunately, this idea might not lead to writing
that was clearer, in the ordinary sense. Rather, it
might favor polysyllabic technical vocabulary,
which (I think) has a better word-for-word
correspondence with other languages than basic
English. Notice, for example, in [calum]'s
example, how //alarming for my company's
professional liability policies// survived intact.
"Quick, Nurse! The screens!" on the
other hand, fails in Finnish, Hungarian, and
Japanese. |
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//in [calum]'s example, how //alarming for my company's professional liability policies// survived intact.//
Though not unaltered: it was originally "professional indemnity policies". Whether that is a material change is something that a lawyer might argue. |
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Anyway, see link, which I could remember existing but wasn't able to locate those many days ago that the idea was posted. |
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It's actually more efficient to do things like spelling & grammar checks after you have finished typing your message rather than to try and amend things as you go along. I suspect that the same holds true for translations as well. Better to concentrate on writing down what you want to say first and then to go back and edit it into a form that other people might have a chance to understand...assuming that you want them to understand, obviously, and aren't just trying to bamboozle them with impenetrable jargon. |
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