Search engines for translations

[Mameha]

Recently i was watching some pages on Facebook where comments were written in Chinese, and whenever i dare to click "Translate" (the translation by Facebook) i just laugh really hard, because translated sentences are awkward, funny, without a sense and it's even worse than the famous Google Translate. Probably it is because this kind of translators just translate the phrases (or chacarters) literally so often the entire phrase doesn't make sense.

So i was wondering if it really exists a Search Engine or a syte where i can really translate words or even entire phrases in the best way possible, maybe recent or anyway operating. First of all i need a Chinese or Korean one, but it would be useful to know some syte for other languages too.

Do you have any link that can help in this way? Especially for the Asian languages that have so many Characters...

[Chris_A]

I don`t think such a Search Engine exists currently. Most automated translating programs work from a pre-programed database, and they translate the words as they are, without giving you any sentence context. Take Google Translate for example. It translates everything you wish it too, but what comes out of it is a garbled mess if gibberish.

[EsperantoOnline]

You do have an interesting request. What I did next was to visit a sample page in Korean. This is what I found:

"세계를 향한 대화, 유니코드로 하십시오. 제10회 유니코드 국제 회의가 1997년 3월 10일부터 12일까지 독일의 마인즈에서 열립니다. 지금 등록하십시오. 이 회의에서는 업계 전반의 전문가들이 함께 모여 다음과 같은 분야를 다룹니다. - 인터넷과 유니코드, 국제화와 지역화, 운영 체제와 응용 프로그램에서 유니코드의 구현, 글꼴, 문자 배열, 다국어 컴퓨팅."

Afterwards I tried several free online translators and as it happened to you I also laughed at some of the translations. However I did find one that was okay and while it probably wasn't perfect you could understand what was going on. 

The best korean translator, in my opinion, gave back this result: 

"The world, towards dialogue, as Unicode. The 10th International Unicode Conference March 10 1997-12 opens in Germany's main live. Please register now. The Conference gathered together industry-wide experts in the following fields. -Internet and Unicode, internationalization and localization, implementation of Unicode in the operating system and applications, fonts, character array, multilingual computing." 

If you are wondering which free translator page I used, it was this one: http://imtranslator.net/translation/korean/to-english/translation/

The best definite answer though would be if a forum member that's fluent in Korean gave us an idea if it actually translated everything as it should be. 

Chinese does seem to be a hard language to automatically translate, have you found something worthwhile? 

 

[xeylonfm]

In as much as technology is pushing ahead towards automating everything, there are some things that would surely take very long to implement…talk of light years from now. I equate true linguistic translation to artificial intelligence. AI has some serious deficiencies and so does app translation of phrases and sentences into a different language. Translation takes a lot more than interpretation of words and conjoining them in the same manner in the original language. This is simply what these translation software do. They lack the true “soul” of understanding and deciphering what “language” actually is because there is no code for such kind of variable. So in as much as software such as Google Translate are in place, I am sure there is a dedicated team of coders in the background always working hard in conjunction with psychologists, human behaviorists and obviously linguists to see that there system maintains in the “path to perfection” even though they can reach there.

[kshaw81]

I can't speak for Asian languages specifically, but there is Linguee, which is sort of a translator and dictionary combined. It can translate words, but also bring up examples of documents in which a word or phrase is found, and the document's translation. I am not doing a good job of explaining the site, but I do recommend it! I use Linguee a lot for German, and it is way more reliable than anything else I've found.

[linguaholic]

22 hours ago, kshaw81 said:

I can't speak for Asian languages specifically, but there is Linguee, which is sort of a translator and dictionary combined. It can translate words, but also bring up examples of documents in which a word or phrase is found, and the document's translation. I am not doing a good job of explaining the site, but I do recommend it! I use Linguee a lot for German, and it is way more reliable than anything else I've found.

Linguee is great, indeed. Have a look here for some more info about it:

http://linguaholic.com/search/?type=all&q=linguee

[Mameha]

Thank you all for the advices! I imagine that it's hard, almost impossible to have a translator for an entire phrase but i see that something that goes near exists...always better than google translate 

[JasleenKaur]

9 hours ago, Mameha said:

Thank you all for the advices! I imagine that it's hard, almost impossible to have a translator for an entire phrase but i see that something that goes near exists...always better than google translate 

Bing and Google both are providing translate options for their users around the world. 

[Mameha]

2 hours ago, JasleenKaur said:

Bing and Google both are providing translate options for their users around the world. 

Everytime i try to translate a phrase on Facebook it says "Translated by Bing" but the translation is a bit weird and awkward...even worst than Google translate 

[czarina84]

I think search engine translators are just lazy.  I think if they had the right tweaks, such as recognizing idioms, they could be effective.  Maybe people just haven't sent in suggestions on what to fix.

[agentzero]

On 11/28/2015, 11:33:24, Mameha said:

Everytime i try to translate a phrase on Facebook it says "Translated by Bing" but the translation is a bit weird and awkward...even worst than Google translate 

What do you expect? It's Bing.

24 minutes ago, czarina84 said:

I think search engine translators are just lazy.  I think if they had the right tweaks, such as recognizing idioms, they could be effective.  Maybe people just haven't sent in suggestions on what to fix.

I think this is more of a programming issue though. There are a lot of idioms that need to be translated in a lot of languages and there are even words that don't exist in every language so I think that can be hard to figure out. I know it would be hard for me to figure it out  

[czarina84]

12 hours ago, agentzero said:

What do you expect? It's Bing.

I think this is more of a programming issue though. There are a lot of idioms that need to be translated in a lot of languages and there are even words that don't exist in every language so I think that can be hard to figure out. I know it would be hard for me to figure it out  

Yes, but they are also made up of more than one person.  I wasn't saying that the people who run the search engines were lazy; the search engines themselves are lazy.  Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to do cute.  I just meant that we are living in the age of technology.  If we can make humanlike androids, we can certainly update a translator to recognize idioms.  After all, there are online dictionaries that do the same.

[agentzero]

10 hours ago, czarina84 said:

Yes, but they are also made up of more than one person.  I wasn't saying that the people who run the search engines were lazy; the search engines themselves are lazy.  Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to do cute.  I just meant that we are living in the age of technology.  If we can make humanlike androids, we can certainly update a translator to recognize idioms.  After all, there are online dictionaries that do the same.

Can we make human-like androids though? I haven't heard of those. I don't know how the wizards of programming function and how they create their programs so I don't think I can add anything of use here, but I still feel like you can cut them some slack. 

[czarina84]

8 hours ago, agentzero said:

Can we make human-like androids though? I haven't heard of those. I don't know how the wizards of programming function and how they create their programs so I don't think I can add anything of use here, but I still feel like you can cut them some slack. 

Yeah, we can.  They are still in the prototype stage.  I researched them when I was writing a short story.  I can't comb through all of my research now.  I think I may have deleted it anyway once my story was finished.  There is one android who can feel the full range of emotions. There's another who has the personality of a man's deceased wife.   

[agentzero]

6 hours ago, czarina84 said:

Yeah, we can.  They are still in the prototype stage.  I researched them when I was writing a short story.  I can't comb through all of my research now.  I think I may have deleted it anyway once my story was finished.  There is one android who can feel the full range of emotions. There's another who has the personality of a man's deceased wife.   

Whaaaaat??? That's amazeballs. And kinda terrifying. Man, I'm getting a real sci-fi vibe right about now. 

[OmniHead]

On 11/12/2015, 2:36:29, Chris_A said:

I don`t think such a Search Engine exists currently. Most automated translating programs work from a pre-programed database, and they translate the words as they are, without giving you any sentence context. Take Google Translate for example. It translates everything you wish it too, but what comes out of it is a garbled mess if gibberish.

Actually there is a search engine that is different, and tries to provide real life translations; http://www.linguee.com

Excerpt from the site:

Quote

What is Linguee?

Linguee is a unique translation tool combining an editorial dictionary and a search engine with which you can search billions of bilingual texts for words and expressions.

The Linguee search results are divided into several sections. In the top section you are shown results from our reliable editorial dictionary. Professional editors are working continuously on adding new entries and enhancing the quality of the dictionary. This provides you with a quick overview of various translations of your search term. Below you are shown example sentences from other sources to give you an idea of how your search term has been translated in context.

Compared to traditional online dictionaries, Linguee contains about 1,000 times more translated texts, which are displayed in full sentences. Linguee shows translations for expressions such as “strong evidence,” “strong relationship,” or “strong opinion,” and even for rare expressions or specific technical terms.

 

 

[Mameha]

@OmniHead Thank you! This is really helpful.

[Chris_A]

On 12/22/2015, 6:15:56, OmniHead said:

Actually there is a search engine that is different, and tries to provide real life translations; http://www.linguee.com

Excerpt from the site:

 

That is very interesting. I have never heard of this engine before. If it indeed can translate languages naturally and in context, it will be a huge boon for translators around the globe.

[OmniHead]

I have found Linguee very useful because it returns at least a dozen of possible translations to a phrase, but from professionally, human translated sources (mainly) what means you can always find accurate, or close to accurate results when it comes to translate an existing phrase, or none at all when you introduce a poorly, already translated phrase that has not exact matches because yours is wrong, in which case it shows how commonly what you may pretend to say should be translated.

One good example on how this works is using Linguee to translate or check your own translation for a local proverb that in your language makes sense, but which loses it when translated, or there is a different, non-literal way to say the same in other language.

 

[OmniHead]

This is an update to language search engines with human translation support:

MyMemory, by translated net, reads like this:

Get a better translation with 1.327.313.129 human contributions

while in some way is similar to Linguee, this engine only focus in the input term you are looking for, without providing further examples of sites using that term or the closest translation. Even though, this is an alternative tool to find human translations.

Link is, http://mymemory.translated.net/

[Lingua Franca]

i don't think there is a translation tool that is 100% accurate fortunately. There are some that are better then others but most will make your eyes bleed.

[anna3101]

Actually, linguee is THE BEST! I've had to do a lot of translation lately (work reasons), and I have no idea how I would have coped without it. Of course, you still need to know the language to be able to distinguish good variants from bad ones (and some plain wrong). However, it's been a huge help for me. I'm so glad I found this site, if you know about others, please share

I'll try mymemory, thanks a lot for the link, @OmniHead !

[Mameha]

On 5/2/2016, 20:15:17, Lingua Franca said:

i don't think there is a translation tool that is 100% accurate fortunately. There are some that are better then others but most will make your eyes bleed.

Lol, when i want to laugh, that is the best way :D I try to translate some Chinese phrases with commons engines and i have a lot of fan actually.

Anyway @OmniHead thank you for sharing those links! really really helpful, it's what i was searching for since it's impossible to translate perfectly something, but this is better than nothing and it's not awkard.