Automated translation (google it)

There have been translation tools that attempt to translate from one written language to another available for sometime. I remember even about eight years ago getting hold of a free version of some software that attempted to translate between Spanish and English. It was fairly useless but the output did provide some laughs for a Spanish speaker I was working with at the time.

Recent developments in the Google translation tools have impressed me somewhat more though.

Despite leaving it until almost the age of 40 before attempting to learn a second language, there are a number of moments in my life that I can identify as specially relevant to language learning.

I remember my father telling me a 'supposed true story' about a computer translation program in the 60's. The story goes that they developed a Computer program to translate from English to Russian. They fed the program the phrase "out of sight ,out of mind" and after some time it spat a result in Russian that was equivilent to "invisible, imbecile". My father knew even in the 70's when he told me that this was a joke in the armed forces (I don't know if they had a phrase for urban legends back then) and I even found a reference to it and similar versions on the web.

I believed him at the time (I was just a kid ;)) and even then it struck me how hard it would be to translate languages. "out of mind" is similar to "out of your mind" and can often be seen as "out of your mind with (worry, fear, anger etc)". The meaning of even that part of the phrase is hard to fathom unless you just know it.

Translation tools can be handy for short phrases, but tranlating either way is not reliable for learning purposes as the results are often really bad.

I still run the odd phrase through a translation tool every now and again (usually one I already have an expected answer for). I have notice recently that although still far from perfect the Google translation tools can be surprisingly accurate. Apparently Google is using their knowledge of the Web to 'brute force' the problem and is deriving translation information from the huge numbers of translated documents they have indexed.

A simple but illustrative example is given with the short phrase (wo3 hui4de) which I usually see in subtitles and Chinese media to mean something like "I will" or in some circumstances "I can", often provoked by someone else asking for something to be done. Google translates to "I will" :), babel fish translates to "my meeting" :(.

I am going to keep watching, but anything that is getting better is a good thing in my opinion.

It is worth looking at the translation page on the excellent MDBG dictionary though because although it uses babel fish it also break the Chinese you enter down in to word sized chunks, allowing you to make your own mess of the meaning.

Literal translation paying huge dividends

A while ago I posted about literal translation and how I thought it was a great aid to learning Chinese. Well as it happens I am discovering just how powerful it can be. In fact I can't understand why it is not emphasised right from the begining by everybody, as eventually it becomes a wonderful tool to aquire some of your Chinese vocabulary for free.

I have noticed that many Chinese words are composites of others, so you get many words like dian4nao3. Dian4nao3 is computer, but don't stop there, it is literally electric brain. Now what if you learn dian4nao3 = computer but don't fully absorb the electric brain meaning what do you lose?

You lost that aha! moment when you learn dian4hua4 = telephone (electric talk). But hang on hua4 is in shou1hua4 and even xiao4hua4 = joke (smile talk) and .... and ... ... and. I think you get the picture.

A couple of the many concrete examples that I have benefited from:

In one Chinespod podcast they introduced the word ke3ai4, I guessed it meant loveable (or cute etc.) straight away from the context and because the ke3 from ke3yi3 and ai4 (love) literally fitted together and made "can love" or "can be loved". I think that often these helpers are missed. A later podcast hits this word again and goes as far as loveable but not down to this sort of literal translation. To be fair though Cpod is more likely than most resources to give you a literal translation or other mnemonic to rember by (cheers Ken).

Next we have an example of a free word and they are increasing. I was looking up words for husband and wife and came across ai4ren2 (spouse, partner, even sweetheart). I decided to mostly ignore it, spouse is an old-fashioned word in English and I guess this wouldn't be high frequency. However I had already noticed straight away that a literal translation could be (love person), which effectivly memorised the word with no effort. About two weeks later and I am half listening to some Chinese radio and I hear a strange line in a song. The line was literally "ni3 you3 bu4 ai4ren2". That sentance was just wrong, surely it should be "ni mei2you3 ai4ren2" or similar??. Also maybe ai4ren2 is more common than I suppossed (store for later and ask someone). As luck would have it the two hosts on the radio station spotted it too and had a good laugh about it (I actually understood some of what they were saying as I had a context, they thought it was really funny). Now I am pretty sure this word and the grammar was wrong.

I did actually discuss this later with a Chinese friend, he thought it funny too. Apparently a lot of Mandarin songs are written by non-native speaker who sometimes get a little dictionary happy and do horrible things with the language.