| User | Thread poster: Alistair Ian Spearing Ortiz Alibaba - an unreliable reference |
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Alistair Ian Spearing Ortiz 
France
Local time: 16:28
 Member (2011)
English to Spanish
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Hi.
Recently, I've seen quite a few fellow translators using the Alibaba website as a reference for their KudoZ answers. I'd just like to point out that Alibaba is a very, very bad reference for non-English languages, since the other versions are simply poor machine translations. This could mislead the asker, who may think a certain expression is correct when in fact it's just the result of machine translation.
It's also a good idea to avoid using Alibaba as a reference when working on your own translations. Well, now that I've said this, have a nice evening everyone!
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Giuseppina Gatta, MA (Hons)
United States
 Member (2005)
English to Italian
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| | Completely agree | Apr 13, 2011 |
And whoever cannot even figure out that Alibaba is just a collection of machine translation strings, should not even be a translator.
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Phil Hand
China
Local time: 22:28
Member (2011)
Chinese to English
| | The Chinese is pretty good... | Apr 13, 2011 |
So go ahead if you're in my pair!
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT
Spain
Local time: 16:28
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
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Alistair Ian Spearing Ortiz wrote:
Recently, I've seen quite a few fellow translators using the Alibaba website as a reference for their KudoZ answers. |
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What????
As we say in Spain, "Apaga y vámonos" i.e. "Leaving! Last one switch off the light please!".
If "professional" translators are using Alibaba as a reference, then it's best if we let machine translation do all the work. The result will probably be a better one.
[Edited at 2011-04-13 20:31 GMT]
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Elena Sánchez-Pinto Hodgson
Spain
Local time: 16:28
Member (2008)
English to Spanish
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Giuseppina Gatta, MA (Hons) wrote:
And whoever cannot even figure out that Alibaba is just a collection of machine translation strings, should not even be a translator. |
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Couldn't agree more...
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Thayenga
Germany
Local time: 16:28
Member (2009)
English to German
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Elena Sánchez-Pinto Hodgson wrote:
Giuseppina Gatta, MA (Hons) wrote:
And whoever cannot even figure out that Alibaba is just a collection of machine translation strings, should not even be a translator. |
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Couldn't agree more... |
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I fully agree.
In fact, the only thing Alibaba is good for is a hearty chuckle at some of its translations( attempts)
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Ambrose Li
Canada
Local time: 10:28
Member (2011)
Chinese to English
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Phil Hand wrote:
The Chinese is pretty good... |
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since Alibaba is a Chinese company, I wouldn’t be surprised at that…
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Annalisa Murara
Germany
Local time: 16:28
Member (2007)
German to Italian
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... Alibaba is not only a collection of machine translation strings, as Giuseppina says, but it is SEO optimized, which is even worse!
Especially when looking for information on consumer goods, it appears at the top of search results in Google.
Maybe Google should think about changing its alghoritm in order to make stand out websites with more reliable content...
[Bearbeitet am 2011-04-14 12:02 GMT]
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Emma Goldsmith
Spain
Local time: 16:28
Member (2010)
Spanish to English
| | Quite useful, actually | Apr 14, 2011 |
I find Alibaba quite useful actually.
If I'm search for a possible term in my work and Alibaba comes up all the time, it probably means that the word doesn't really exist.
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The translation workplace 
