Jorge Gonza Peru Local time: 21:04 English to Spanish
I'm using it more an more
Oct 27, 2011
I've been using Linguee.com more and more at the expense of my use of proz itself, I have to say. I hope I'm not being politically incorrect. .
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Tony M France Local time: 04:04 Member French to English + ...
Linguee
Oct 27, 2011
Yes, it is a useful resource — BUT like all these things, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Over the (relatively short) time I have been using it, the majority of my search results pages have had seriously defective translations in many results, in some cases, the majority of them.
Very often, it is just a matter of the highlighted words not corresponding in both languages — a fairly obvious problem that is easy to resolve.
However, I have also had many instances where the two chunks of text simply didn't correspond at all, so the source term actually didn't appear in the target text; this basically just renders the entry useless.
Much more dangerous are those entries where you can see at once that the target text is a very poor translation of the source text — in some cases, looking like M/T. In these cases, the terminology equivalence must be cast into doubt, yet people not native in the target language may well not realize the translation is flawed, and hence give it greater credence than it deserves; we have seen a lot of this where Linguee has been quoted as a supposedly authoritative source to support answers on KudoZ.
I would be interested to know just how Linguee entries are generated, and what if any human checking is done?
So I would certainly advise great circumspection when using it. Personally, I think it is always going to be lacking that human inut, which is such a very strong point with KudoZ — nothing can really replace the great store of personal knowledge that users here so generously share with each other.
[Modifié le 2011-10-27 15:29 GMT]
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Marie Chevassus France Local time: 04:04 Member (2010) English to French
There is an English <-> French version
Oct 27, 2011
Anne-Marie Grant wrote:
I just wish there was a similar version for French-English.
Linguee is really useful - I'm always recommending it to people.
There is an English French version, I use it a lot, and almost no more other "dictionaries". Linguee speaks of so many domains, it is helpful whatever you need to translate in this pair.
Of course there are some small flaws. One of them is that many translations are in Canadian French without saying it, and of course idem for French translations for our Canadian friends.
Marie
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Jorge Gonza Peru Local time: 21:04 English to Spanish
It's pretty much the same concept with more of a TM focus, rather than a dictionary focus. E.g. you can upload and download TMX files and the autoidentification of the translation is less advanced. Unfortunately, the search engine in mymemory isn't that great, but hey, it's free.
[Edited at 2010-10-02 09:05 GMT]
Hi Farkas,
Thank you for sharing this resource.
One curious thing: this website also shows Google automatic translations and their results for my so far very few searches have sometimes been the better ones!
I wonder what the algorithm for the Google machine translations is. Does it make use of some kind of human feedback, such as automatic sampling and statistics analysis of human-produced texts and automatic updates based on sample results?
Does anyone know?
Cheers!
Jorge
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Jorge Gonza Peru Local time: 21:04 English to Spanish
A handful of salt for linguee :D
Oct 27, 2011
Tony M wrote:
Yes, it is a useful resource — BUT like all these things, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Over the (relatively short) time I have been using it, the majority of my search results pages have had seriously defective translations in many results, in some cases, the majority of them.
Very often, it is just a matter of the highlighted words not corresponding in both languages — a fairly obvious problem that is easy to resolve.
However, I have also had many instances where the two chunks of text simply didn't correspond at all, so the source term actually didn't appear in the target text; this basically just renders the entry useless.
Much more dangerous are those entries where you can see at once that the target text is a very poor translation of the source text — in some cases, looking like M/T. In these cases, the terminology equivalence must be cast into doubt, yet people not native in the target language may well not realize the translation is flawed, and hence give it greater credence than it deserves; we have seen a lot of this where Linguee has been quoted as a supposedly authoritative source to support answers on KudoZ.
I would be interested to know just how Linguee entries are generated, and what if any human checking is done?
So I would certainly advise great circumspection when using it. Personally, I think it is always going to be lacking that human inut, which is such a very strong point with KudoZ — nothing can really replace the great store of personal knowledge that users here so generously share with each other.
[Modifié le 2011-10-27 15:29 GMT]
I agree with you in many ways, and that's why it is such a great resource for experienced translators -like you, for example- who are able to identify such subtleties.
But it can make your day if you're stuck in one word you're not so sure about. This is especially true when the sources are such authoritative bodies as US-government agencies. As for European sources such as eur-lex, I still find wide differences among renditions.
So one good thing is that the website is shown and therefore you have a basis to assess its reliability.
Cheers!
Jorge
[Edited at 2011-10-27 16:06 GMT]
[Edited at 2011-10-27 16:07 GMT]
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Michael Beijer United Kingdom Local time: 03:04 Member (2009) Dutch to English + ...
thanks for this one. Never heard of it before. I think online alignment of web resources on the fly (without having to download them) will be important in the future, although I don't know any tool that does that.
Kind regards
Noe
[Edited at 2011-11-04 17:09 GMT]
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Oliver Walter United Kingdom Local time: 03:04 Member (2005) German to English + ...
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laure claesen France Local time: 04:04 Member (2005) English to French + ...
All the time
Nov 4, 2011
Hello everyone,
Yes, bit by bit, Linguee has become one of my most-used tools. Especially one I am tired and have the term at the tip of my tongue but my own human memory cannot retrieve it.
But as many others, it cannot be used as a "stand-alone". One mustn't give up their creativity or forget their own context. And remember that translating is not just about words.
I think that, as wine, it will get better as it matures. We might find, for instance, that over the years, whilst there was some kind of "trend" (sheepishly followed by most of us) to translate one particular term this way or that way, and suddenly, another idea might be the next choice.
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Michael Beijer United Kingdom Local time: 03:04 Member (2009) Dutch to English + ...
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Tim Cleary United Kingdom Local time: 03:04 French to English + ...
Very useful tools, but also use the best computer in the world: your brain
Nov 7, 2011
Hello All,
I have become very interested in Linguee and Google Translate in recent months, which both appear to be based on similar principles (the use of bi- and multilingual websites to find instances of vocabulary and phrases that have already been translated).
Using Google Translate the other day, I was able to type in an Arabic expression in Roman script, which then appeared on the screen in Arabic script. I was then able to translate it into English (quite accurately) and then show my Spanish friend what it meant in Spanish. Remarkable...
The way I see it is as follows: these are remarkable tools that often produce remarkable results that solve translation problems, and they are rather like a second brain to assist your existing organic one. However, use the context of your own source text to judge whether it fits your own translation. I sometimes find that the translation suggested by these tools would usually be acceptable, but in the context of my own unique text they cannot and should not be influenced by another text that has been written and translated in different circumstances.
I hope that helps.
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