Online translation

[Mac]

Does anyone know of a good online translation site? I can translate easier stuff but some official paperwork is harder to do, even with a good dictionary.

[velcorin]

Nope, tried 'em all, but if I get stuck at work, I e-mail it to the missus. Does that count?

Not found one yet that can cope with the context of a word, when there is more than one meaning. The French, pocket-sized, female human version, can do that.

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

I'll second velcorin. Apart from failing to pick the right meaning for homonyms, translation sites have a nasty habit of missing negatives, so you can get the completely opposite meaning from the original. For example, look at the last part of these two sentences translated by Google.

En effet, nombre de ponts passent sans aucun problème et d'autres ne présentent pas de danger, si ce n'est de frotter sur quelques caillasses quand il n'y a pas trop d'eau.

Indeed, many bridges pass without any problem and others do not present a danger, if not to rub on some caillasse when there is too much water.

[Doodle]

I use Reverso for translation and Verb2Verbe to understand the tenses. I copy the sentences I don't understand into the translation engine then copy the english version back onto a word document. Long winded but works quite well and I get a french lesson into the bargain!

Chris

[Jimmy]

[quote user="Albert the InfoGipsy"]

I'll second velcorin. Apart from failing to pick the right meaning for homonyms, translation sites have a nasty habit of missing negatives, so you can get the completely opposite meaning from the original. For example, look at the last part of these two sentences translated by Google.

En effet, nombre de ponts passent sans aucun problème et d'autres ne présentent pas de danger, si ce n'est de frotter sur quelques caillasses quand il n'y a pas trop d'eau.

Indeed, many bridges pass without any problem and others do not present a danger, if not to rub on some caillasse when there is too much water.

[/quote]

Reverso comes up with "Indeed, count of bridges(decks) pass without any problem and the others do not present danger, if it is not to rub on some stone when there is too much water". If you just feed "n'y a pas trop d'eau" into Google Translate then you get "not too much water"

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

You can see the difference between 'too much' and 'not too much'.

[ericd]

Mac, i have sent a pm