Re: CHAT: German help
| From: | Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, July 1, 2006, 6:20 |
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On 01/07/06, Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> wrote:
> Babelfish isn't absolutely useless, but there're
> better utilities out there. And nothing beats asking a
> native speaker (which you may not have access to,
> depending on your location).
Babelfish is useful for translating texts from foreign languages into
one you speak, and I think that's its real purpose. It's broken, but
can usually give you enough understanding you can work out what it
means. I've also seen it used to encourage native translations: a lot
of French/German computer users willl be fluent enough in English
they're happy to use an English translation of software, but (so the
theory goes), they're less happy to see a broken French/German
translation. Give them the latter, and (so the theory goes) they'll
contribute back corrections. (I suppose this is a special case of the
first use.)
--
Tristan