howdy do
we (my wife has a brother in Germany and we need to send a letter to him and his family.we have the addy and such but are in need of translating our english into german so they can understand what we wrote. we would like to keep in touch with them as we have not been in touch for 15 years or so. could some body help point us in some kinda direction. we need to figger out how we can type out our language and the computer put it into german language.
i sure hope this all makes sence.

I think the first thing to emphasise is that translation isn't easy and that the mental process of the human-translation endeavour involves highly complex processes of the brain: it's not straightforward. Translation is not mere word substitution, save in the simplest of cases (even "The cat sat on the mat" needs disambiguation before you can translate it!)
Accepting this premise forces the conclusion that translation software cannot do as good a job as an esperienced human being, because distinguishing between "He made me angry" and "He made me a cup of coffee" isn't that easy for a machine to decipher, though they've been working on it for decades now via parsing and computational linguitics and so forth. Translation software is best kept for repetitive lists or used on tightly controlled source text where style is deliberately sacrificed to avoid vagueness and ambiguity. Most efforts now have turned to "translation memory" instead of "machine translation", and this is much in demand in the professional language world.
That said, your needs are to translate a letter to some friends, so the problems, therefore, are fewer. Or are they? Believe me, you don't want to upset such good friends by misrepresenting your feelings and signing a text you do not undertand that may in no way reflect what you really want to say. So what do you do?
Well, if I were you, I'd send a typewritten letter (easier to read than "foreign" handwriting, expalining briefly that you're sorry you can't communicate in German. Many Germans can understand a little English and almost everyone will have a friend or neighbour willing to help out, particularly as the friend in question will be "translating" into his or her mother tongue, which is always an advantage and isn't your case. Alternatively you could bite the bullet and pay a professional to do it for you, though you'll find that expensive if your exchange of correspondence develops over the coming weeks
Believe me, translation software on offer ranges from the free and not very good to the complex, adequate for certain material, and relatively expensive, even though prices are lower now in real terms than ever before. If you do want to see the shortcomings of some of the free stuff on the web, however, try this link:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
It's just one of many, but if you do use it, please tell your fiends that your letter has been computer translated! And whatever you do, good luck!

Dodge, you'll get a good idea of what Colin is talking about by writing your letter into a translating website like babelfish. Type it in English and from English to German Translation. Then try taking the so-called German translation and re-translate it from German back into English. You may be surprised - if it's even understandable.

Take it from me, someone who has been a translator for decades, computer software for the project stinks...doesn't come even close. If you live near a university, see if you can find a grad student in German to do it for you. They tend to work cheap, and are generally pretty good.

humm this is harder than i thought. not so simple. well maybe we have to take a class in german. we really need to get contact made with the relatives there. be for it was her mom making all the contact for everyone but she has gone to a better life now.
thank you for your replies.

ive just tried that translation and all i can say ya ive got a lot of work ahead of me to learn each word that we need to say. i never thought it would be so different. well i got to get to the books now. again thanks for the response. i got an eye opener

quote:

Originally posted by dodgecity:
well maybe we have to take a class in german.

No, no, no, for your own sanity, don't do that ! It's got three genders of nouns,it puts verbs at the end of sentences, it makes endless new words by cementing together several others,it has two forms of 'you', it has so many irregular verbs that you wonder how the grammarians define 'regular'......etc etc (Oh, and it doesn't sound pretty, either)

quote:

It's got three genders of nouns

It also has 4 cases, adjective endings, certain prepositions demand certain cases, some have more than one. Moreover, one class will never teach you enough to write a letter beyond Ich heisse dodgecity und ich habe Hunger.

Let me give you an example. To say something as simple as I went to the movies with my wife:

Ich bin ins Kino mit meiner Frau gegangen.

You have to use the accusative case of the neuter definite article after the preposition "in" when it implies motion. Also the article "das" contracts. You have to use the dative case of the feminine gender of the possessive adjective after "mit". You have to use "sein" as the auxiliary verb in the present perfect because "gehen" (to go) is intransitive. The participle has to go at the end of the sentence and it is irregular. You also have to capitalize all nouns.

well ive got to do something and this sounds like a good challenge to me. but i have a feeling that by the time i learn this i might as well forget the darn letter cause everybody will be gone. i wish mom was still here it was much easier then. she could speak and write english or german.the things we really needed to learn before they all go away. you just don't know how much you need to learn from your parents till there gone. then you realize you sure missed a lot and its to late, cause now there gone. well thank you all for your input ill keep looking for somebody to translate for us.
thanks

Try these people:


American Historical Society
of Germans from Russia
3233 N. West Ave.
Fresno, CA 93705

If that doesn't work, try some of the organizations in California listed here:

http://www.doctorwooff.com/dach/clubs.html

hi dodge,
is it a long letter? you can send it to me. i can do it for you.

and juan, sweetness, "ich bin mit meiner Frau ins Kino gegangen".

Magst Du mal mit mir ins Kino gehen?

See, dodge, the Germans even have rules about the placement of the whom and where in a sentence.

hass,

Ins Kino oder...