Best online translators

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Kraut
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Best online translators

Postby Kraut » Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:56 am

Best online translators: as you would expect no 1 is DeepL



https://outilstice.com/2021/11/les-meil ... -en-ligne/





Voici une liste des meilleurs services de traduction en ligne :

DeepL
Reverso
Linguee
Systran Translate
ImTranslator
Promt
Wordreference
Yandex Translate
Bing Translator
Google Translate
Lexilogos
IBM Watson Language Translator
LibreTranslate

Quel est le meilleur site de traduction en ligne ? Conclusion


You can give them a pop-up function with Firefox's add-on "Pop up
Dictionary"
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ictionary/
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Re: Best online translators

Postby luke » Sun Jun 26, 2022 12:07 pm

It makes sense to me that there would be a base language centric "quality" for machine translators. I.E., Google good when one language is English, DeepL good when one is German, Yandex when one is Russian.

From a purely Spanish to English perspective, my preferences are:
1. Google
2. Yandex
3. Bing
4. DeepL

I'm not familiar with the others.

The power of these tools can change rapidly. I can see value in re-evaluating a translator that wasn't so impressive in the past. I confess I have not used DeepL much for several months.

Generally, between Google translate, WordReference as a dictionary, Google or Bing images, and Yandex I come up with a personally satisfying translation.
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Re: Best online translators

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jun 26, 2022 5:34 pm

DeepL translates only the first verse of this poem from Housman, so I tried Reverso. The original English is followed by French, Spanish and German (the only languages I can even begin to understand). Not sure the "away" is correctly translated in any of the three? But I thought, overall, not too bad.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

Quand j’avais un an et vingt ans
J’ai entendu un sage dire :
« Donnez des couronnes, des livres et des guinées
Mais pas votre cœur loin;
Donner des perles et des rubis
Mais gardez votre fantaisie libre. »
Mais j’avais vingt et un ans,
Inutile de me parler.

Cuando tenía uno y veinte años
Oí a un hombre sabio decir:
"Dar coronas y libras y guineas
Pero no lejos tu corazón;
Regala perlas y rubíes
Pero mantén tu fantasía libre."
Pero yo tenía uno y veinte años,
No tiene sentido hablar conmigo.

Als ich eineinhalb Jahre alt war
Ich hörte einen weisen Mann sagen,
"Gib Kronen und Pfund und Guineas
Aber nicht dein Herz weg;
Verschenken Sie Perlen und Rubine
Aber halten Sie Ihre Phantasie frei."
Aber ich war eineinhalb Jahre alt,
Es nützt nichts, mit mir zu reden.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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Re: Best online translators

Postby desafiar » Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:59 pm

I haven't used or tested enough of them to have an opinion on the best. Of those that I’ve used, none has consistently provided the best translation. When I'm in doubt or would like confirmation, I'll use another translator.

The three that I use daily are chosen due to my workflow. I read primarily on my laptop, whether it be online, ebooks, or PDF documents. Therefore, I'm most likely to use the translation provided by macOS which is one click away at all times, with the exception of content within the Kindle app.

Along with Apple's translation, I primarily use the installed macOS DeepL app. I choose it not only for its capability, I also prefer the local interface and quick results. While I'm reading, I'll collect sentences within the app for later inclusion into Anki. Most of the time the results are satisfactory, and quite often better than Apples.

My third translation app is Reverso, again installed on my laptop. I mostly use it when I'm not satisfied with translations from the others or would like to see some additional sample translated sentences.

I’m never translating more than a sentence or two, perhaps a paragraph at most, at any given time. If I were translating on a greater scale, I may test other translation services. But I'm satisfied with those that I use for my purposes.
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Re: Best online translators

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:21 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:DeepL translates only the first verse of this poem from Housman, so I tried Reverso. The original English is followed by French, Spanish and German (the only languages I can even begin to understand). Not sure the "away" is correctly translated in any of the three? But I thought, overall, not too bad.


German actually seems decent for away, with use of the word "weggeben". "Eineinhalb" is clearly wrong, though, as that should be einundzwanzig.

The thing with many online translators and poetry is that they often overlook archaic turns of phrases that are used for poetic effect, and the breaking up of a single line into two stanzas of text confuses them. Also, some poetic nuances, especially things like rhyme and alliteration, aren't always able to be used in a TL in similar ways. IMO, poetry and songs are the hardest things to translate.

For me, I use Deepl and Linguee. I love how they often give sentence examples when searching for a single word. Deepl also knows a lot of popular expressions and colloquial turns of phrase, which Google often gets wrong. I used to use Leo, but Linguee has better examples, so I switched.
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Re: Best online translators

Postby Kraut » Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:42 pm

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Sae
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Re: Best online translators

Postby Sae » Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:07 pm

I'm curious trying out other translators, so I'll take a look at those on the list.

I guess the effectiveness will depend on the language. But the main use I've seen out of Google translate (which is all I use ATM) is for words or very simple sentences and even with some simple sentences I think it helps to know some of the language's rules, especially when translating from the language in question.

For example, in Vietnamese:

Anh đã ăn bánh sandwich của em.

Google translate will translate this to:

I ate your sandwich.

But it can also mean:

You ate my sandwich.

And sadly this is the kind of thing translators will find impossible to get right because context is needed. First and second person pronouns aren't really used in day-to-day Vietnamese, but the pronoun identifies the relationship between the speaker and listener, so the meaning of the sentence above depends on the age and gender of the person I'm speaking to.

If there was like an annotation on 'anh' and 'em', I think it'd be a neat feature of a translator to say what the meaning is in different contexts. If there is a translator like that, I'd love to pick it up. Only then will I realise whose sandwich was eaten.
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Re: Best online translators

Postby Le Baron » Thu Jun 30, 2022 3:29 pm

They don't even catch these things in their well-established languages. According to an article I read in the TLS Google translate is indifferent to his/hers, she/him in French. That's understandable, but it means it's not a solution in place of a real translator who will translate contexts and idioms and those things like the Vietnamese above. And there are many languages like this where only an actual user knowledge enables you to put things into context and derive meaning.

I just went to Google and put in a random sentence from an English book: 'The letter wasn't very easy to decipher...'

Google insists upon only: 'la lettre n'était pas très facile à déchiffrer..'

Which I consider fair enough and correct, though it's a literary novel and I think I would have chosen something more like: 'la lettre n'était pas très aisée à déchiffrer'. Based upon the context of it being more about the scruffy handwriting and verbose style making it a chore. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it seems right. Algorithmic translators don't care about nuance.
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Re: Best online translators

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Jul 07, 2022 11:13 pm

LeBaron makes a good point here.

Most translators also can't give you a particular verb form, either. If I want to say, "You are pretty today," there are three different ways that could be translated into German, depending on context. You singular formal, you singular informal, or you plural. And Google translate ONLY uses the first one. It's irritating.
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Re: Best online translators

Postby luke » Fri Jul 08, 2022 12:38 am

Le Baron wrote:I just went to Google and put in a random sentence from an English book: 'The letter wasn't very easy to decipher...'

Google insists upon only: 'la lettre n'était pas très facile à déchiffrer..'

Which I consider fair enough and correct, though it's a literary novel and I think I would have chosen something more like: 'la lettre n'était pas très aisée à déchiffrer'.

You get my vote as a better translator than Google, Yandex, and Bing on that sentence. In addition to the style reasoning you mentioned, you're closer to literal, as you're using the closest cognate, for which you receive two thumbs way up! :geek:
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