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AutomaticTranslation

There is a way to get an automatic translation of a page by using a prefix composed of the language shorts for the original language and the language translated to. For example:

DeFr:Übersicht, FrDe:Plan du Site, DeEn:StigMergy, EnDe:SoftSecurity

The folks on s23 invented it. It uses the InterMap and Google translation. http://www.google.com/language_tools. The presently possible language pairs are En / De, It, Fr, Pt, Sp in either direction and Fr / De in either direction as the only pair not containing english. There are many other online translation services that might be used offering languages as russian, arabic and swedish.

For more ideas on an improved application of this feature see http://wikifeatures.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/AutomaticTranslation

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Implementation of FrEn? and EnFr?, ItEn? EnIt? is recommended I guess. It's on time to think about an integration of it in the engine, maybe even a of a "translation mode". Thanks Alex, this rocks!

Translation seems a bit flaky. Is there some way of saving the raw machine translation for editing by humans? Also, clicking on EnDe:SoftSecurity brings you, not to a translation, but to the Meatball Soft Security page!

I just read "Nach Babel" (After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, by George Steiner ISBN 0192880934 (alternate, search)) and while readers may agree more or less with him, he gives a great deal of arguments, why translation is difficult, not only between languages, but also between people using the same language (but in different time or cultural context). Basically he also gives many pieces of evidence, that all but the most simple automatic translations are bound to fail. This is in accord with my own experience: If there is substancial meaning or context in a sentence, automatic translation fails. It needs a mind, sometimes an excellent mind, and sometimes even this is not enough. AutomaticTranslation means the solving the problem of an artifical mind and AI is far from that. – HelmutLeitner

see http://wikifeatures.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/AutomaticTranslation for my further intentions as automatic preparation for manual translation. Automatic translated text is very often corrected faster and the results are more precise (as unknown vocabulary is pretranslated) than when translating something from scratch and looking up things in a dictionary. I think it might speed up translation a lot. Caring for a good result remains every translators duty, sure.

AutomaticTranslation can very well transport the essential meaning of a text. It means to learn to write in a way so that the translated results are understandable. That means a link to the translated page on the originals top, and comparing the translated page and the original page and changing the original one until the translated one is half-way understandable. I tried this a bit on Spam ist Information. How does it feel?

A way of saving the raw machine translation for editing by humans would be nice, yes. Right now one would still have to copy and paste it. I sense the necessity for a translation mode here, a special edit mode with inserted raw translation and a left right split window, the original left, sentence by sentence would be great.

EditNearLinks: PatrickAnderson

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