h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If ti wasn't for Douglas Adams lying in a field one night I would not have a way to cheat when doing my German homework! His brilliant idea of the Babelfish gave way to Altavista's translation service http://babelfish.altavista.com/ which has made my life easier. Well Done.

Thanks for all the help for french h/w! A website only just preceding the excellence of the restaurant at the end of the universe!

I have been so bored at times to have found amusement translating text back and forth with Altavista from one language to another and seeing how things get out of control.

For instance, statring with the last sentence, and going from English to Spanish to English, I get:
"I have had so I have occasionally bored to have found diversion that it backwards translated the text forwards and with Altavista from a language to another one and that saw how the things leave control."

Taking that and going back and forth between many languages I arrived at:
"The outside for a little near the mark that it finds, lengthily the hour, in diverson, the lucky person of the declaration of the credit fixed for him at your service, who transfers the way the text and the translator of the language for all the possible numbers of the mountain, because the request concludes it via that way to go."

With a similar process, but now sometimes translating text from a language it is not actually written in to another language, I get, eventually,
"Finish to the relative idiot of the elasticity of the program of the idiot and the rabbit of the small description what nontrue hour of the capacity lengthily, diverson he, pure of the affection I that maintain to be lucky ring not of the compiler of the person of the indication seize of sake of the accreditation or the idiot of the elasticity and text of transference that visit their language possible he too much of that of parce of the elasticity of the pure principle to number of the mountain he more."

I interpret this to mean:
"Finish, you relative idiot, checking the elasticity of the program, written by an idiot and the rabbit of small description. What capacity you have for lengthily diverting yourself to an unheard of hour, though pure of affection! I maintain you lucky not to be siezed and wrung from the computer by some person for the sake of accreditaion. You are `The Idiot of Elasticity of Text and Language', `He that Parce for Pure Principle a Number of Times as High as a Mountain and More.'"

Taking the hint, I will stop here.

-More Machine Than Man

I remember years ago reading about work on translation programs (then a newly viable idea), in Reader's
Digest, I think, and they translated this into another language (French, I think):

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And then translating it back to English, it was something like:

The wine is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.

Which actually makes some sort of sense, but it means something almost entirely different!

well I put the amazing power of babelfish to work on a wide range of insults, and not one of the made any sense, apart for the one about goats in french, what does that tell ya?

that you have to reword what you say

I prefer to reword what it says, it seems to have a bit of a problem with grammar which with a little bit of knowledge about languages is easy to correct. I wouldn't use babelfish on anything serious tho

Of course you realise that this was not conceived as a translator merely a generator of Vogon poetry. All that remains now is to translate in to its native tongue.

Close. The phrase "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" was translated into Russian and Back, and we got "the vodka is agreable, but the meet is rotten". Simmilarly, we translated the English phrase "Out of sight, out of mind" into Russian and back and got "invisible insanity". Ain't Language fun?

I just translated "A watched pot never boils" into German and back. Sounds simple? I got back, "Blood ulcers monitored of a pot never."

Now how did it do that? Also, I think German to English is more accurate than English to German.

I wouldn't be to sure about 'German to English is more accurate than English to German'. I tried 'Kann ich bei Dir schlafen?' (Can I sleep at your place) and got 'CAN I SLEEP WITH YOU?'
I wonder how many hopeful english-german chat-relationships were swiftly and cruelly terminated by this. Maybe the Bablefish is not translating, but reading the user's subconscious mind. That would make it even more useful.

Maybe that's why my German h/w gets such a bad response

I recently translated a page of quotes I have on my website into Spanish and back again.
Check them out at http://www.iancowley.co.uk
On the left are links to the original quotes, and the babel-quotes..

And now that Altavista has noticed the popularity of Google (http://www.google.com ), and introduced thier own Raging search (http://www.raging.com ), they've gone ahead and come up with:

Raging Babel Fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/raging/translate.dyn )

Does anyone else have visions of angry Babelfishes burrowing through one's ear into the brain?

Forget blue fishes - I think that they need a red one as the mascot for this page!


Shmuel

I think the problem is that English is one heckuva screwed up language. When translating English into Spanish, everything is fine, just a few errors like mistaking the anatomical back for the preposition. ("my aching back" vs. "the car is out back"). However, when translated back into English, all hell breaks loose.

On another note, I know that somewhere on the web there is a site where someone has set up a port with babelfish, so that you can enter a phrase, and then the port translates it back and forth between two languages you select until it stabilizes. I just can't remember where it is...

It was probably thinking of "boils" as a skin condition.
I guess it has trouble with parts of speech. This
probably explains most of the really weird translations.

Depending on how well it deals with parts of speech
in other languages, maybe German-to-English is
easier, or harder. Also, it seems to have problems
with endings of words; I once got a German word
translated as "Downloaden"; I assume it looks at
parts of words as well as the whole thing, and thought
this was a good ending, although there is no such
word in English. Could it mean "full of download"?
Or "laden down" or "burdened"? Very odd....

I live and work in Germany. Downloaden means just that...DownLoading.

I use translators often as I converse with many nations. If the translator can't figure out what word is correct it leaves it undone. Translators are great substitutes for the old dictionary style books however just like the old books they can't help you with grammer.

Every language has different rules, sometime more than one set (german has more than five sets of rules...
Old,
Old-Proper,
Bavaria,
Standard-(This is our everyday speach and slang),
Austrian(I don't know what rules they have),
Stuttgart- [it's unpronouncable in English]).
Inside each set are rules for men, ladies, and young children

Mens use a set and ladies use a different set, just as men Bow and ladies Curtisy in some countries.
America has at least two, some say three...North, South, and Texas (It's called an acsent when spoken, but if it's written word for word it uses it's own dictionary-60 Minutes did a report "Ask or Axe")

The main problem is online translators don't know the meaning of the message, they can't put it in context like a human translator can.

Try this problem...
Most every one learning German in the US are learning the old Proper dialect...Don't understand? Imagine a country teaching english in their schools, however instead of using current english they are learning old english (remember the funny tounge twister Romeo&Jouliet). Now if these students went to the USA wouldn't they have a problem ordering a BigMac (although you would be able to understand a few of the words).

My suggestion is to make the translators more understanding.
The old saying: Speak what I meant, not what I said.

Güten Tag, Kenneth Lyons
Heidelberg, Deutschland (Thats Germany for those that don't know)

PS
Which is right?: Deutsch, Deutsche, Deutsches (They are all right, it depends on which set of rules you use.)
In old-proper Deutsches could be singular or plural, in standard it plural.
The can be usually be interchanged Deutsch, Deutsche in all sets. However there is a push to Deutsch only.

If your curious this is what they are supposed to mean (Most translator fail this one)
Deutsch=German as in the people one lives (like American)
Deutsche=Germany as in the land that the country is (like America)

and so too shall I depart hence.

That's very interesting about German grammar. I'm part German, but never learned to speak it. My father
(who is also of German descent) learned some in school, but he has a hard time translating it compared
to Romance languages (French, Spanish, Latin, Portuguese, Italian, etc.), which he doesn't really know
much better than German! (Although for a while he did use French when he worked with a French software
company, and he had to learn French computer jargon, so he got a modern translation dictionary.)