George Pope ---> Bj”rn Forsstr”m AM 09.07.06
BETREFF: *Tattoo*

BF>> That's the trouble with just using a translator. You must know a liitle
BF>> abo the languange you are translating to.

GP> I'm not expecting "proper " -- just enough
to convey to a native
GP> speaker my intent. . .

For that languages are to complex. Very small differences in the sentence  
can have a totally different meaning. In latin half the time I was in  
danger of translating the exact opposite meaning of what the sentence  
really meant. Unbelievable maybe, but it is that easy. The main problem  
was, that one word had many different meanings, which in the wrong context  
had a completly different meaning. And that is a problem a automatic  
translator also has.

I remember a "Simpsons" episode. Flanders said in the english version  
something like "I don't drink, I don't lie, I don't swear!". In
the german  
it was translated with ".... I schw”re nicht!" which is in fact correct,  
but not with the context, because "schw”ren" is the
"swear" as in "I swear  
that I will do you no harm".


And to make it more complicated: Sometimes the structure of a sentence is  
so different, that a literal translation makes no sense or at best  
unclear. Never forget: Translation is always an interpretation as well.  
The computer cannot know what you want to say... and more often than not  
nonesense appears on the other side.

But in this case it did not make a typical mistakes, but it mutilated the  
sentences. I have no clue what it was thinking.

Bye,
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