[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Fwd: Re: writing in German, Russian

[Karl Krueger]

I would back up what Jerry and Joe said. This translator, as any others I've seen give you an initial preview what it is about but it's accuracy is questionable. I felt it did a better job translating Jerry's phrase from German to English than it did on Ken's English sentence translated to German. A German would have realized instantly that this would have been someone with an elementary skill of the language and likely would not be using correct words or grammar. The problem for the native speaker reading this is trying to predict what the person is "really" asking for based on what was provided. That was not apparent in the translation.
  Karl

Joe Pessarra <joepessarra at suddenlink.net> wrote:
  From: "Joe Pessarra" <joepessarra at suddenlink.net>
To: "Jerry Frank" <FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca>,
"Kenneth Browne" <kbrowne at alumni.umass.edu>,
<ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:20:58 -0500
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] writing in German, Russian


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jerry Frank" 
To: "Kenneth Browne" ;

Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 10:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] writing in German, Russian


Jerry Frank's first post -

IMPORTANT clarification regarding the suggested link in this message

While the intent is to help with translation, it
is important to understand that the suggested
download is for a desktop applet (they call it
desklet) service that contains many other
features which you may or may not want on your
computer. You can find a fuller description
without downloading anything at
http://avedesk.aqua-soft.org/ . If you do not
want these other features, you should not
download the software. Other free translation
services such as GOOGLE and Babelfish are
available but they don't have the convenience of
being immediately available on your desktop.


Second post - some of it deleted.

Ken,

The German characters came through OK for me but
not the Cyrillic. I find that the software
settings can be a mixed bag, at least in my
use. Sometimes the German characters are jumbled
up while other times they are absolutely
correct. Sometimes I see Cyrillic, other times not.

As for translation software, it is OK for basic
elementary translations but generally cannot
handle detail very well. Both languages contain
words that have two or more non-related
meanings. The software cannot analyze intent and
therefore picks one at random. Software is not
good at establishing context nor at understanding colloquialisms, etc.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The suggestion to use simple on-line translatioln services comes up
frequently on many of the genealogy list servers and news groups.

Jerry is quite right in his comments. Use only to get a general idea of
what is being written, not use to understand exaxtly what is meant.

I use these sources quite frequently, but only to get started on the
translation, sometimes to decide if it is worthwhile following up on the
particular item.

And I do have my brief translation sources available right on my desktop.
There is one site that has many possible translation sources, and for many
possible languages. This has helped me out a lot in the past. Here is the
site.

http://www.word2word.com/free.html

Notice the choices in the box at the top of the page, but then scroll down
to see all the language translation possibilities.

As Jerry says, use any of them with care.

Joe in Texas



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