Google translate will ensure you fail in Latin

[Iohannes Aurum]

There are good news and there are bad news with Google Translate being available in Latin.

The good news: It is a major improvement over InterTran.

The bad news: It is still hopeless.

Read it here: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/868886--et-nunc-googlus-defero-latinum

 

[voxlarsi]

Guess this means less "of", "the", "God" etc in the middle of latin tattoos... But I suspect that people who formerly would ditch the intertran might rely more on Google, simply because it's Google; thus increasing the amount of misspells. Nevertheless, this will be an enormous improvment from intertran.

However, unlike any of the other languages Google Translate supports, Latin offers a unique advantage: most of the text that will ever be written in Latin has already been written, and a comparatively large part of it has been translated into other languages.

OK, just for the heck of it I ran the maxim cum ames non sapias aut cum sapias non ames.
It came back: "If you love you with not wise and is not a particle of sense, or when you love you are."
This looks promising :roll: Although, they did warn about the subjunctive, I just thought such a quote might be implemented in the translations or something.

 

[Nikolaos]

Amore more ore re
Love more hours re

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

 

[Bestiola]

It is interesting to observe what Google translator does even to translations to English.

Translation of OP's post to Latin:

Bonus est nuncius, nec male Google Translate nuntium ad available in Latin.

Bonus novus est ut cognita prodest lingua est ingens lenimentus super bini.

Malus autem, significant tamen oportet operari nec restituo foro Latin optimus auctor libero latina.

The same post back to English:

Messenger is good to them, nor failure could the news to the Google Translate available in English.

The good news is doth it profit so that having learned the language is a vast improvement over the two.

Bad when it, do signify that although we need to restore the forum to work, neither the author of the best free English Latin and English.

"doth"? As far as I know, use of "doth" has been in decline since 17th century and finally ran out of use a few centuries ago.

Not to mention what it does to any declined language - all translations I saw to Croatian were literally incomprehensible.

 

[cinefactus]

"We know that our grasp of the ablative absolute or use of the subjunctive may occasionally be off"
Well how about something really difficult:

the girls love the farmer: amore puellae agricolae
the girls see the farmer: Puellae agricolae
the girls talk to the farmer: puellae agricolae loqui
the girls talk to the farmer in the fields: puellae agricolae sermones in agris


"Google said the service would be useful for the more than 100,000 American students who take the National Latin Exam every year."

Useful to distinguish those who studied the language from those who cheated

 

[cinefactus]

Not to mention what it does to any declined language - all translations I saw to Croatian were literally incomprehensible.

Not just declined languages. The Chinese translations are odd.
Interestingly, if you type:
你想分手嗎 it gets the right translation: "Do you want to break up"
If you add a question mark, it changes to "Do you want to break it"

Still an improvement from Intertran!

 

[Bestiola]

Well how about something really difficult:

the girls love the farmer: amore puellae agricolae
the girls see the farmer: Puellae agricolae
the girls talk to the farmer: puellae agricolae loqui
the girls talk to the farmer in the fields: puellae agricolae sermones in agris

Back to English:

amore puellae agricolae:love 's farmers
puellae agricolae:the girls are the farmers
puellae agricolae loqui:girl 's farmers to speak
puellae agricolae sermones in agris:girl 's the words of the farmers in the fields

Back to Latin:

love 's farmers:amor agricolae
the girls are the farmersuellae agricolae
girl 's farmers to speakuellae agricolae loqui
girl 's the words of the farmers in the fieldsuellae verba agricolae in agris

 

[Nikolaos]

I used to trust Google Translate as far as I could throw it (which was a fair distance, since I usually ran it on my iPod). It now has lost that last bit of respect from me.

 

[Iohannes Aurum]

Well, if you used the Latin translation, there is a note that it is in the alpha stage, so glaring errors are common.

 

[scrabulista]

Hmm....Time was that the alpha test was internal to the company and the beta test was to the customers.

 

[cinefactus]

To temper my criticism, I think that we should give credit to the programmers who work on this kind of task. A program which could translate to the level of a native speaker would be fantastic, and it will never happen unless we go through the intermediate steps first... OTOH, I think that Google was way too optimistic in their descriptions of its ability

 

[cinefactus]

Oh no... I couldn't help myself

The girls walk into the forum: INTRO puellas forum
the girls are walking into the forum: Puellae in forum ambulat
the girls are walking in the forum: Puellae in forum ambulat

Grammar is just good enough to ensure that all the students who used it will fail for incompetence rather than for plagiarism

 

[voxlarsi]

Useful to distinguish those who studied the language from those who cheated

Maybe they implemented a homework-block on the translator, so that all sentences seemingly taken from a textbook will be run through intertran instead? When I ran some parts of commentarii de bello Gallico, most of it was at least understandable.

 

[Decimvs]

t... OTOH, I think that Google was way too optimistic in their descriptions of its ability

I agree. I messed with it a bit this morning...it is pretty bad.

 

[Akela]

Grammar is just good enough to ensure that all the students who used it will fail for incompetence rather than for plagiarism ;_)

 

[metrodorus]

The google Latin translation engine cannot translate Latin - what it can do, is search for texts in its database, that are Classical texts that already have translations, and give you the translation in its database for that fragment of text.
Anything in what some Latin teachers are fond of calling 'inauthentic Latin' i.e. not penned by a Roman him or herself, is regarded by Google as not being Latin at all.
The engine cannot translate even the most basic sentences, if they are not already in the established corpus of texts.

 

[Nikolaos]

That's what I determined after entering some of Caesar... Rather than a translator, it's a searchable database. In that respect, it may be somewhat useful... but not much.

However, that makes translation to Latin a complete fraud.

 

[Nikolaos]

I decided to give this a chance with an incredibly simple phrase:

Agricola filiam amat.

GOOGLE TRANSLATION:
The daughter of Agricola, he is loving.

 

[Decimvs]

Caesar suos hortatus hostes interfecit. : Caesar, having encouraged his men the enemy killed him.

Cicero in foro ambulans pecuniam suam amisit. : Cicero, in the forum, walking, he lost his money. (a little bit better)

It is no so horrible that I want to swallow a knife, but, still bad.

 

[Nikolaos]

I decided to check Google's progress... most of the phrases that I checked gave the exact same translations, but some are different. Here is John's post translated and back-translated:

Sunt et evangelium male Google Translate nuntium esse available in Latin.

Bonum nuntium cum litteris iuvat et linguam melius sit amet, super InterTran.

Malus autem, significant tamen oportet operari nec restituo foro Latin optimus auctor libero translationibus.

There are ill and the gospel's message of Google Translate to be available in English.

The good news with a letter the tongue of my delight, and it is better to love, upon the InterTran.

Bad when it, do signify that although we need to restore the forum to work, neither the author of the best free English translations.

There are ill and the gospel's message of Google Translate...