Translation
What is translation?
Translation is the changing of one different language to another more familiar language, people translate languages because it is a means of communication with foreign people who do not speak the same language which is familiar to you, translation is common in language classes in which children and adults take to learn these foreign languages.
How do you translate?
There are a lot of ways in which you can translate, you can translate it mentally by using your knowledge of the language, you could hire somebody who’s first language is that language to translate some text into your language or you can use the internet, the internet being the most popular choice being the quickest and easiest for free translation online.
The internet offers a vast collection of different translators for free translation but most of these translators are known to be problematic and to not correctly translate words, therefore people prefer to stick to mentally translating a language but if you do not have much time on your hands then using a free online translator to get you the translation may be the better option for you. Most online translator sites are free of charge but there is a few which will charge for a certain amount of words but more often than not it will cost you nothing.
What sites can I use for online translation?
The most common way people find and use an online translator is through their search engine, most search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and a lot of other less common search engines all have one included with their services. Therefore they are fairly regularly available for you to get a hold of without any trouble and you can get translating straight away.
The difficulties and problems of translating
Many people may find themselves hit with a problem while translating, be it the tenses of words or misspelling both can cause a lot of confusion when you are trying to translate a document, these just being manual translations, there are a lot more problems and confusions when using online translators, the reason behind this is unknown but there have been cases where people translate something with an online translator then they translate it back and the word is completely different, this is just one of the many major examples.
How to translate properly and accurately
The best way to translate properly is to learn the language and then set about translating things manually, this will often be a lot more accurate therefore making it easier to read, But if you are not able to take classes on the language and have no experience with it then you may want to hire somebody for the most accurate translation, or if you are running low on funds then you could use an free online translator such as the Google Translator , but for more accuracy try translating the sentence which you get out back into your language and see what you get. This is the best tip that you could get when using online translators for automatic translation.
Lost in Translation
The term lost in translation means that a translation gets translated so much that the actual sentence/phrase becomes so distorted that it cannot be understood, it is like Chinese whispers but with the translation instead of the phrase, because sooner or later as it goes round it is guaranteed to change in some way.
Here is an example of this, I have translated the phrase “I walked my dog” into Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian and Icelandic, here are my results from using free translation online.
Portuguese
Eu andei o meu cão0
English
I walked my dog
Japanese
私は私の犬を歩いた
English
I walked my dog
Chinese
我走我的狗
English
I walk my dog
Hungarian
Sétálok a kutyám
English
I walk my dog
Icelandic
Ég geng hundinn minn
English
I walk my dog
These results were with the translator called Babel Fish, simply search it and it will come up, as you can see these are fairly accurate apart from a few mistakes but the sentence is still understandable, this means that you can rely on translators but you must remember this key quote, translation is like Chinese whispers, the longer the sentence the worse the results. This is a good quote to remember for online translation and to stop this you should translate sentences at a time and not paragraphs.