[sldev] Please help testing the SL Viewer with integrated universal translation

[Glen Canaday]

If English were easier than the others we wouldn't get such horrible 
translations into it. I'm used to seeing multi-linguals speaking French, 
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese as their four primary languages simply 
because they are so similar and based from the same root. They all share a lot 
of vocabulary even though native speakers insist that they are so different 
they can't understand one another. English pulls words from nearly every 
language so there isn't as much overlap from others. Because of that, all of 
the talk about English being simpler to learn for a non-native speaker truly 
boggles my mind because that is the diametric opposite from what I've seen 
first-hand.

Add gender to the language and you've screwed the average native English 
speaker. We don't use it and don't understand it. That's where we get messed 
up.

Japanese is actually extremely simple. German isn't as bad once you realize 
that the 47-letter word with only two vowels is actually three words 
concatenated, and that "ei" is pronouced as the English "i" and "ie" is 
pronounced as the English "e." Note that the pronunciation of these two 
diphthongs is the second letter English pronunciation. Not difficult for an 
English speaker but Germans have to practice learning it.

Even Gaidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) has an extremely consistent phonetic structure 
and spelling. It's as consistent as Spanish is to me.

Point is, it doesn't matter what the universal translater does, it's going to 
suck at it. No translator can make up for human mistakes.

--GC

On Thursday 26 February 2009 11:29:31 am Mike Monkowski wrote:
> Henri Beauchamp wrote:
> >>>Automatic translators are utterly useless and totally unable to
> >>> translate properly from simple languages such as English into more
> >>> complex and subtle languages such as French, German, Chinese,
> >>> Japanese...
>
> ...
>
> > You can say and explain very complex things, even with "simple"
> > languages, but I assure you that English is incredibly simpler than
> > French or German (since I did learn all three, I know what I am speaking
> > about).
> > The grammar is incredibly much simpler in English, and the vocabulary is
> > simpler too. For example, you can translate "to get" in at least 30
> > different verbs in French. or "power" into two different names (these are
> > just two examples out of my head, but cases are countless).
> > Fact is that at school (some 4 decades ago), I just needed a couple of
> > months to learn the basis of English, while even after three years, I
> > could never express myself as fluently in German (and since forgot
> > pretty much everything I was taught in this language). That's also one of
> > the reasons why English is so successful as an international "common"
> > language: it's easier to learn and use than most (if not all) other
> > languages.
>
> Perhaps it's just that speakers of English are more tolerant of mistakes
> than are Francophones.  Although your English is not bad, "incredibly
> much simpler" is not good English. One translates "into" not "in".  You
> meant "nouns", not "names".  "Out of my head" means lost emotional
> control.  I assume you meant "off the top of my head".  That's "basics",
> not "basis".  It should be "have since forgotten", not "since forgot".
>
> I have been trying to learn French for decades.  The problem I have is
> that the only places I can hear it spoken is on my XM radio and on
> rented videos.
>
>  From my experience, Chinese grammar is less complex than English
> grammar; Spanish phonetics are more consistent than any of the languages
> you list above; and three and four year old children are amazingly adept
> at learning any language.
>
> :-)
>
> Mike
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