Translation Software

[El Detective]

Hi Gang,

My wife has picked up a good temporary job translating for a school; English to Spanish. Most of it will be direct verbal translation from the instructor to the class but there will be some written translation of materials and tests.

She bought a relatively cheap (less than $100) translation software but I am leaning towards telling her to return it and get her money back before she opens it. Do you feel I am wrong and she can get her money's worth from the software? Should she invest in more expensive software such as Wordfast or Tratos? Give us some guidance please.


Joel

[mvictoria]

Hi Joel, $100 does sound cheap. Did she buy a "machine translation" (like Babylon) tool or CAT tool (Trados, Wordfast)?

[El Detective]

Hey,

It's a machine translator called Power Translator 12. I haven't seen it in action but I hear all these translators are the same as the ones available for free on the internet. The only advantage to this one is that you don't need an internet connection to use it.

What do you think?

Joel

[Veronica]

Hi Joel, in my personal opinion, she will be much better off with her own knowledge and a few dictionaries.
Machine translators (MT) tend to make an excessive amount of gross mistakes that can render the text incomprehensible or worse, mistranslated; and correcting bad translations usually takes more time than translating from scratch.

MT don't translate according to context, that's the problem. They could be helpful to translate a huge amount of words in a very little time, but of texts that won't be read in detail.

In Babelfish I entered this text in Spanish "¡Como extraño las comidas caseras de mi abuela ahora que vivo afuera!" which means "How I miss my grandmother's homemade meals now that I live abroad!" and I got:
"Like stranger the homemade meals of my who now alive grandmother outside!"

[analaura]

Yes, I agree with Veronica. MT are helpful in emergencies, but you need to go through the text again polishing it, and sometimes corrections take even longer than translating from scratch.

You can trust a Translation Software, but you can also find free trials on internet.

tell us how you are doing in the end...

[El Detective]

Thak you all for the replies. You all echoed my feelings so she decided to return the software and bought the Oxford Spanish Dictionary software instead.

It too is limited but we both love how the "ifinger" attaches itself to Microsoft and Acrobat windows so you have the translator available immediately without having to go from one window to another. Beside, it only cost us $7.00 American on sale through Amazon.com.

Joel

[andreap]

That was a good thing to do!