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  #1  
Old 05-17-2005, 08:02 AM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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A whole new world

Today I mistakenly right-clicked on a thread in the SBC Forum and saw that I can now translate every post into English. I think this is a function of the Google Toolbar that I installed in my browser. This is kewl!
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Old 05-17-2005, 08:30 AM
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How'd you do that?

I've been talking to them in my limited Spanish. Portuguese is a little different.
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Old 05-17-2005, 09:11 AM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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I think it's a function of the Google Toolbar that I got from the Google site, which self-installs into my browser.
I just right-click on a post and I get a menu of browser options beside my cursor. One of them is "Translate Into English."
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  #4  
Old 05-17-2005, 09:14 AM
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That?s cool... some of us can speak english, but I guess you would be loosing all the action going on in portuguese. That?s a cool feature from the google tool bar, kind of a babel fish taken one step further.


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Old 05-17-2005, 11:11 AM
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For some reason, the Portugese-English translator in babelfish does a very poor job. I suppose it's affected by poor spelling and colloquialisms. (If spelling is a factor, translating most of the English language posts on here must be a nightmare!) I wonder if the Portugese spoken in Brazil is as different from that in Portugal as say USA vs. England?

The Brazilians come up with some terrific stuff! I'll have to try that Google feature.


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Old 05-17-2005, 12:01 PM
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Yes, portuguese in Brazil is acctualy very diferent from that spoken in portugal, specialy because some words have very diferent meanings in both places and because in portugal they are very used to translate foreign words while we don?t in Brazil. Let me give you an example:

If you are talking about the animal mouse, in portuguese you would say "rato", but in Brazil if you are talking about a computer mouse, we would say "mouse" cause it?s a foreign therm, while in portugal they would translate that and refer to the computer mouse as "rato" as well.

This is just a small thing, but you can get into bigger trouble when it comes to slangs. In portugal "bicha" means line, like when you have to wait for your turn in a bank. In Brazil "bicha" is an offencive name for homosexuals.


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Old 05-17-2005, 01:13 PM
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I'm using a Mac laptop, so the right click doesn't work from here. I searched the Google site and don't find the toolbar.
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  #8  
Old 05-17-2005, 01:43 PM
fitzo fitzo is offline
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Well, Don, I would have to say you aren't missing much with Google's translator. It appears to translate literally word-for-word without any regard for sentence structure/meaning/idomatic phrases. In other words, though the translation is into English words, a lot reads like gibberish.
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Old 05-17-2005, 02:04 PM
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Jeff,

My first Spanish teacher was from Brazil with Spanish being her 2nd language. My 2nd one was from Madrid. I eventually gave up on trying to use it around when I was in the Navy when I found out from an Army brat whose mother was Castilian(sp?) that even in Spain there were 7 dialects He said that people had to talk very slowly and avoid idioms.

I will say that sometimes idioms can make things rather funny. My wife spoke fluent Persian French at one time with some Quebiqua (sp) thrown in. In French the American term for a stud translates directly to "my hot little bunny" Also did a Google hunt for corgi rescue places for adopting a dog and found out that that is also a British slang term for a homosexual man.

Jim
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Old 05-17-2005, 02:27 PM
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Languages are a fascination for me... I begun studing english when I was 10 and I started to teach it to other kids when I was 16... being a portuguese mative speaker and never have being abroad at that time, that was something...

From that on I learned some spanish and have tried some japanese and arabic, but those were expensive so I had to quit.

Web based translators are not very good Fitzo but they will give you the general idea. Once you start using them and get used with the problems you can start reading through it. Of course the most subtle aspects of the text will be lost, but IMHO it surely brings worlds closer.


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Old 05-17-2005, 03:42 PM
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I learned enough German in high school to proficiency out of anything further in college. Great Lakes Naval base had a contigent of German sailors so we used to get together to practice our languages. It was considered the "language of chemistry" at that time. Alas, the chemistry world was switching to English and no one bothered to tell me...LOL It did stand me in good enough stead in college, however, to understand that LSD stood for "LysergeSaureDiethylamid" or whatever the hell it was. I read foreign chemical patents at work in German for awhile but it was really much better to pay the $5 and get it in a translated copy. If you don't use it, you lose, so today it is almost all gone. I still retain the Slovenian I picked up from Grandpa that used to get my mouth washed out with soap quite regularly.

Nowadays, Waukegan has become a primarily Latino community and it bothers me that I don't know Mexican Spanish and thus can't meet my fine neighbors in the middle so we can truly be neighbors. I bought books and tapes, but it turns out that only the tourista phrases like "where is the bathroom" are really taught in "Spanish for Dummies".

It seems a lot harder to learn a new language at 54 than it did at 14.......

And, yes, Jeff, I share your fascination with languages. One's first language largely determines how we think, and contains the cultural antecedents which make us who we are. It was sort of enlightening many years ago when I read a couple papers on the subject of how language actually controls how our thought processes work. Supposedly the hallmark of exceptional grasp of a secondary language is when one can think in that language without translating.

Last edited by fitzo; 05-17-2005 at 06:45 PM.
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  #12  
Old 05-17-2005, 04:29 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fitzo
And, yes, Jeff, I share your fascination with languages. One's first language largely determines how we think, and contains the cultural antecedents which make us who we are. It was sort of enlightening many years ago when I read a couple papers on the subject of how language actually controls how our thought processes work. Supposedly the hallmark of exceptional grasp of a secondary language is when one can think in that language without translating.
I learned Castilian Spanish basics when I had a job that required me to do business in Mexico City.

When I try to converse with the locals here on the Mexican border it's a problem. I have to ask them to slow down and then it''s still hard for me because of colloquialisms.

If I'm down in the interior of Mexico and can't hear any side conversations in English, I don't have to translate in my mind.

For me, I need to translate in my mind if I can hear English in the background. If I can't hear English in the near area, a conversation in Castilian Spanish is relatively understandable.

People who speak Castilian seem to enunciate their words better and speak slower than the border people.

I have no trouble reading and understanding Spanish, and I can get the meaning of most posts here in Portuguese for that reason.

If I ask one of the locals here to spell a Spanish word so that I can understand it better, they can't spell the word.
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Old 05-17-2005, 04:31 PM
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Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (I paid attention in chemistry!)

When I was in high school, my French class went on a cheapy tour of northern France. While there, the girls in the group were having trouble with the French men grabbing, fondling, and otherwise trying to pick them up. One of the chaperones told the girls to call any guy harassing them "cochon" (pronounced co-shone), which means "pig". One day, in Paris, a couple of guys were trying to pick up a pair of girls that were out sightseeing. One of them remembered to call the guys "pig", but mispronounced the word as "coo-shone" ("couchon"), which means "let's sleep together". Well, the more she said that to the guys, the "friendlier" they got, until finally she had to start yelling for the police. The poor guys, who thought they'd were about to get lucky, were pretty confused and ran off.

Winston Churchill said (about England and the US): "We are two nations separated by a common language."


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Old 05-17-2005, 04:47 PM
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Standing in the bank line is a real "bicha" here also.


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Old 05-17-2005, 05:19 PM
Sam Wereb Sam Wereb is offline
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It's probably unreasonable to expect a software program to accomplish real translation with perfect grammar, usage, syntax and style. Written translations take as much talent and effort as any other professional craft. But this little thing helps a lot and it opened a whole new part of the knife world to me.

Plus, I figured someone should be keeping an eye on those Portuguese in case they were trying to take over the world again.

Don - When I hit the google front page the link to "Get the Google Toolbar" is right there in blue and white. If it isn't there in your browser you can try the link http://toolbar.google.com

I'm not sure what you can do with a Macintosh - I'm only familiar with computers.
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