5 Oct
2011
5 Oct
'11
7:52 p.m.
On 5 Oct 2011 at 18:25, jim s wrote:
Interesting that google translate auto recognition
thought this was
french then proceeded to mangle it. It didn't have latin in the past,
so I would use another site to force the translation.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
I note that Google has dropped Latin from its "Language tools" main
page. The renderings were hilarious, if not cryptic. For example,
Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
(In laboring to be brief I become obscure.) used to translate to
something like "To be brief, dance with ugly women." Using
translate.google.com, it now is rendered as "Shortcut to be to work,
become obscure.", which sort of misses the point, but at least skips
the ugly women.
Translate.google.com still shows Latin as a choice, so for the above,
you get a very reasonable "Nothing but good concerning the dead"
So Google's improving.
If I crank the Lithuanian national anthem into Google Translate, it
used to deliver, verbatim, the "poetic" Wikipedia translation. It
flows well, but takes definite liberties with the text. Now, the
translation is more literal, even if it doesn't know some of the
words.
I'm guessing that Google's algorithms for inflected languages don't
work terribly well--yet.
--Chuck