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«« Previous: 9/23/10 Board of Aldermen Meeting
Next: New campaign to prevent mistakes of Somerville Ave reconstruction project from being repeated »»
by Alain Jehlen in Accessibility, Media
Posted on September 15, 2010 at 10:41 pm
We’ve had a proposal that we make Google Translate available on our website. You can see how it works here.
Do any of our readers have experience with Google Translate? Would it be a good idea?
«« Previous: 9/23/10 Board of Aldermen Meeting
Next: New campaign to prevent mistakes of Somerville Ave reconstruction project from being repeated »»
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I think it would be a good idea to have Somerville Voices accessible in translation.
My experience with Google Translate has been that the translations are awkward. Here’s an example of a random news story from Der Spiegel (about the trial of a teenager) translated from German into English:
“The trial of the father of the gunman from Winnenden began with a legal notice: There is also a criminal offense for negligent homicide come into consideration. A hint of surprise in view of previous methods course any more. What does the message of what happened before – and especially why.
“The 51-year-old father of the gunman from Winnenden, who made the first trial, of his right to remain silent, is accused of the murder weapon unlocked, and a total of 285 rounds of ammunition to have kept in his bedroom.”
As you can see, you can get the drift of what the writer meant — but it’s not a perfect translation! It’s possible some nuance and some meaning will be lost in the translation, but that’s also possible when a nonnative speaker who’s not an expert in the language is reading a text in another language. There just should be a warning that translations won’t be exact, I think.
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Another prime example of this “lost in translation” aspect is the bi-monthly broadcast of the Somerville Board of Aldeman meeting.
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