Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Ah, Bing!


I realize that translations from some languages are more difficult for an automatic translation service. Still. I have a Thai friend who posts on Facebook from time to time in Thai and I cannot understand any, or any part, of Bing's suggested translations. Here's the latest:
"Does anyone have a seat to eat drink shop, Pattaya, sriracha, bangsaen row instructions? Request for academic work in the store, read and drink alcohol, virtual fotlot. (Translated by Bing)"
Of course, Google Translate doesn't do much better, though its suggestion is refreshingly different from Bing's:
"Yet each one would eat the some Sriracha Pattaya recommend it. I read in the academic and spirits served throughout."
One thing that's strange to me is that not only do the English versions make no sense, but they are (wildly) grammatically incorrect. Surely some sort of standard syntactic structure in the final product should be part of the translation requirement.

It doesn't help much to translate into other languages either. Here's the French version proposed by Google Translate, quite close to the English:
Pourtant, chacun mangeait la Sriracha Pattaya certains le recommande. J'ai lu dans les milieux universitaires et les spiritueux servis tout au long.

Translations from Chinese, for which Bing and Google presumably have more data, are not much better:

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Though, in support of Bing, at least the English here has a dreamy oriental hai ku cum Cat Stevens flavour.

For those eager to try their own hand at the Thai quoted above, here is the original: ใครมีีร้านนั่งกินดื่ม แถวบางแสน ศรีราชา พัทยา แนะนำบ้างครับ ขอแบบอ่านงานวิชาการในร้านได้และมีเครื่องดื่มแอลกอฮอล์เสริฟตล