Just a cool little tidbit for those of you who correspond with Thai people or would simply like a rough translation of websites that are written in Thai. Google has added Thai language support in Google Translate.
The only gripe I might have about it is that it translates English -> Thai Script or Thai Script -> English. You cannot simply type in “Sawadee” and get back “Hello.” Likewise if you type in “Hello” you get สวัสดี. That’s great if you can read Thai Script but you can’t ever be too sure of the translation if you don’t read Thai Script.
One of the best ways to test of translator (in my opinion) is to give it text in a source language, translate that into your target language, and then use the same tool to translate the target language back into the source language. This will give you a pretty good idea of whether or not things are keeping their meanings during the translation process.
So for a test I took one of the stories appearing on the homepage of Bangkok Diaries and gave it a shot. For the sake of keeping this as simple as possible I only selected the first sentence from author DougBangkok’s post How to Learn Thai Like a 4 Year Old Kid.
The original text:
How does a child learn a language? They are born unable to speak, and for the first 12 months, just make noises. But after 12 months, words come. Single words initially, but by 24 months, most children are speaking in simple sentences and have a vocabulary of several hundred words.
And Google’s translation of the above:
อย่างไร เด็กเรียนภาษา? กำเนิดพวกเขาจะไม่สามารถพูดและแรก 12 เดือนเพียงทำให้ noises. 12 เดือนแต่หลังจากคำมา. เดี่ยวคำชั้นแรกแต่ 24 เดือนโดยส่วนใหญ่มีเด็กในพูดง่ายๆประโยคและมีคำศัพท์หลายร้อยคำ.
It seems to have choked on the word “noises” and doesn’t really do numbers though there probably isn’t any need to translate numbers so no points off for that.
So now the real test is to translate it back into English and see how closely it resembles the original text:
How children learn language? Origin, they can not say the first 12 months and just make noises. 12 months, but after word came. Single word at first, but by 24 months most children are speaking in simple sentences and a vocabulary of hundreds of words.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Huh?
Actually that is a terrible translation and although some of the words are correct the sentence structure is totally wrong and the sentences don’t make sense. I seriously doubt that a Thai person would understand that “translated” passage. The Google translator may have limited potential to be used as a dictionary, but it has a long way to go if you want your Thai friends to understand what you’re trying to communicate.
@Nick: Actually the idea isn’t to translate large amounts of text as a standard form of communication. Notice I said:
That’s actually not that bad. I would guess that if you needed a quick translation of a website or wanted to get a specific point across to a Thai friend who wasn’t comprehending your point in English then it would be pretty effective.
For the purpose stated I think it is a decent tool. Better than not being able to translate it at all.
And I have used it when a Thai friend doesn’t know the word for something or they’re not getting the meaning of what I’m saying. So far, it has worked pretty well for that kind of task.
I also use it because a friend of mine keeps a blog in Thai. I just have Google do the translation and I can comprehend about 80% of each post. Sometimes it translates things strangely but then I just have to ask and show her what she said and what it translates to and she usually laughs and tells me what she was trying to say.
But nobody is suggesting that you take Shakespeare and copy and paste it and voila you’ve got a quality Thai translation.