> Daniel Quinlan wrote:
>> I don't expect the translations to be usable without editing, but I
>> suspect that editing will be faster than writing from scratch. Some are
>> directly usable. Some are not.
>
> OK, I hadn't realised this was simply intended as help for human
> translators. As you say, some are usable more or less directly and some
> are total gibberish. Speaking with my professional translator's hat on,
> I wouldn't use this method personally - too much risk of being led
> astray from the right translation by babelfish's inconsistent attempts,
> and too many words that are translatable in other contexts but actually
> need to remain in English here. Each unto his own, though; some of the
> volunteer translators may indeed find this tool useful.
I can't speak for many of the languages on the list, but there are a few that
Babelfish
will mangle, namely Japanese. Speaking as a [hobby] Japanese translator, I can
verify
that the output I've seen from just about any of the online translators produce
a
Japanese that is laughable if it's to be called "natural Japanese."
I'd like to also add that providing the Babelfish output as a means to "push
start" a
real translator will mostly be unfounded as the translator will have to throw
away
everything and start from scratch anyway. The only kind of help I can see this
providing
is perhaps provide a translation for a word that otherwise the translator would
have had
to look up, and even then it's risky believe it's correct anyway. Technical
terms are
often difficult to translate for Babelfish and offer even more confusion for
the Fish
when used in a sentence.
My recommendation, and it may not be in line with the popular vote here, is
provide i18n
with correct translations for the languages or don't provide it at all. Most of
the
organizations I've seen will usually release translations for the languages
that their
volunteer translators have finished only and wait on releasing more till later,
as
opposed to releasing everything through Babelfish and later re-release the
translations.
Andre
