We got a French fax today at work, and my boss asked who could read French. I mentioned that I knew some, but VERY little.

I had a heck of a time to get the real grasp of the request of this fax. I then typed it verbatim in the bablefish translater. I got the drift, but it was rather garbled.

Does anyone know of a site that is fairly reliable for translation?

Thank you.

I use this for work and it seems to be quite reliable. Scroll down to Language Tools. Enter your text and then select French to English.

itools.com

I just tested three translators on a snatch of French:

'Notre petit garcon aurait bien voulu boire de la biere.'

Google http://translate.google.com/translate_t

translated it:

'Our little boy would have agreed to drink beer.'
************
Babelfish at http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

also tanslated it as

'Our little boy would have agreed to drink beer.'

Itools.com using the site http://ets.freetranslation.com/

translated it:

'Our small garcon would have well wanted to drink biere,'

thus failing to translate two standard words, and failing to translate the somewhat idiomatic
'vouloir bien' (to be willing) as well. Babelfish did better on this, but not as well as a human translator.

So babelfish and google looks pretty good for simple things.

I think the problem is that automatic translators simply cannot (at this stage, anyhow) do as good a job as a human translator. They don't 'understand' the context.

The thing about the i-tool translator is that if you are inputting a foreign language you do have to include all the symbols. I forgot to mention that

That being said, it did translate "Our little boy would have agreed to drink beer." into "Notre petit garçon aurait consenti à boire la bière." and vice versa.

Babthrower, thanks for the additional links and while all might be fallible they are at least helpful in giving someone an idea of what a general translation is. Better than nothing, huh?

Thanks, Georgia, as a matter of fact I did NOT include the cedilla in garcon and the accent grave in biere.

Actually I think translators are great. They save a lot of work. They're just not perfect. Yet.

Yes, I agree, although they are not by any chance "perfect" - they ARE helpful.

Thanks Georgia and babthower!

I use translation websites all of the time for educational use. I have found that by far, the best free translation site is: www.freetranslation.com It can translate bascially any language you can think of! Ex. French-English or English-French. If you want a more in depth translation, it can be professionlly translated. Of course, that costs money. A lot of money ($40.00+). But the free translator is very, very good. You'll find out for yourself if you try it. Hope this helps!

710's site is the same site that Georgia cited.

If you click 710's link

www.freetranslation.com

and enter text, it takes you to

http://ets.freetranslation.com/


Georgia gave us

http://www.itools.com/

which leads you to

http://ets.freetranslation.com/

The options for paid translations are handy to have.

http://www.pbar.net/

Will translate websites for U.

ivnj

PBAR uses Babble Fishp. But a lot easier cuz there is no copy and paste.

ivnj

You're probably right, but I don't generally recommend installing browser-addons. They're overkill, usually contain spyware and add a lot of unecessary bloat to a system. (Windows is bloated as it is.)

Interesting to note though, PBar is spyware/adware. Mainly it likes to take over the Default_Search_URL value in Internet Explorer. PBar is free because of the advertisements, which.. to support the spyware claim, are targeted.

I guess it all depends on how you define adware/spyware really.

PBAR doesn't showup in SpyBot or any other spy program I've ever used.

Plus their PopUp blocker is the best I've ever seen. Blocks everything.

ivnj

Mozilla Firefox has the best popup blocker, in my opinion.

Like I said, it all depends on how you define adware/spyware. I consider anything that gathers information about what I type to serve targeted ads.. an intrusion.

But where did U read PBAR is gathering info?

ivnj

IVNJ, according to worldslargestnetwork.com PBAR may contain spyware.

PBar Privacy Statement

Not personally identifiable means that they can still point targeted advertising towards the user. However, if someone was to ask later (after the instance) data would not be stored which could be used to identify you, the user.

quote:

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We may collect aggregate information concerning search criteria and the use of PBar's features, all which do not contain personally identifiable information ("Aggregate Information").

---

Also, who wants their e-mail address added to a huge spam list? I'm sure they sell them, just like every other company.

quote:

---

We may maintain subscription mailing lists using the email provided by you while you register to one of our services.

---

But I never gave out any E-Mail Address and still got the IEbar.

ivnj

You probably didn't register for any of the services.

However, I find it as a complete intrusion of privacy. I'd never install it. It's really a matter of opinion.