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I've had this page up for several years now, and notice from my web
logs that the traffic to it shows little sign of decreasing. From time-to-time
I use the links to see how things are progressing -- and I must say
I'm encouraged. In general, the quality has improved, but my initial
observation still applies: human translators need not rush out to look
for career alternatives!
A number of organizations offer "free" translation on the
web. Most also offer products or services you can buy. To test how well
the translation works, I provided the following sentence to be translated
in to French for each:
I wonder how well this will translate into French.
- www.freetranslation.com (one of the originals)
French returned: Je me demande comment bien ceci traduira dans
Français.
And translated back to: I wonder how well this will translate
in French.
By mid-2005, their cyberspace presence had changed to http://ets.freetranslation.com/
and the results were now:
French returned: Je me demande comment bien ceci traduira dans
le français.
And translated back to: I wonder how well this will translate
in the French.
- An early attempt by a company who, by 2005, was thankfully no longer
offering the service...
French returned: MOI étonnement que sain ça vouloir
traduire en français.
And translated back to: I amazement as healthy thanksggiving desire
translate in French.
[I guess it is no surprise they stopped the service!]
- babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?
(One of the early ones, and consistently pretty good.)
French returned: Je me demande à quel point ceci traduira en
Français.
And translated back to: I wonder which point this will translate
into French.
- www.google.com/translate_t
(It didn't even exist when I started this page, but of course Google
offers this service and has become a major player!)
French returned: Je me demande à quel point ceci traduira
en Français.
And translated back to: I wonder which point this will translate
into French.
[Hmm... sure looks a lot like the babelfish results.]
Apparently translators needn't worry quite yet... But for quick translations
to help understand something in a different language, these services
might be an alternative worth considering.
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