Chinese Translation

[Guest]

A few weeks ago I met someone in China who told me there was a chinese
software application that made translation into other languages very easy.
Basically this program could be configured to interrupt character strings
sent to the screen and replace an alternbative text pair in another language.
Effectively this program "sat" between your program and the screen. The
program to be "Transalated" was a configuration option as were all the text
pairs. You had to do the translation yourself. "Yes" is "Ja" in dutche so
this would be a pair. The program writes "Yes", but "Ja" appears on the
screen.

Question - Is this really possible or just a lot of BS? If yes, can anyone
tell me more about the name of the program, where I could get a copy, web
site etc. Does anyone know of an alternative method that does not involve
translating the source code.

Thanks in advance

 

[Bob I]

It's a good way to generate insults. Translation requires making phrases
MEAN the same thing not just the replacement of words.

 

[Uncle Joe]

Agree with Bob I. The purpose is to convey the real
essence of your correspondence. Simply replacing one
word in English for a word in Spanish may change your
message and generate many chuckles on the receiving
end.

Language translation by electronic means is in its infancy
despite huge advances in computing technologies and
resources.

If you're interested in translating from English to Chinese
(or vice versa) for your own products (software, ad copy,
fire extinguisher instructions), definitely employ a Chinese-
speaking translator who can capture the essence of your
message properly so that your potential client base is able
to fully comprehend your points/instructions.

Good luck.

 

[Guest]

Joe, Bob,

Thanks for your comments but you missed my comment about configuring word
pairs. Absolutely the words and/or phrases MUST be configured by someone
fluent in both laguages (in my case english/chinese). the neat idea about
the concept was no source code changes and no reprogramming for Unicode etc.

The in between program would be Unicode compliant and just replace the
english with chinese. ie. English_Word-Array[37] would be replaced by
Chines_Word_Array[37].

Thanks for the response anyway.

DaveM

 

[Bob I]

In that case, here is a list of possibilities.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=english-chinese+word+translation

Joe, Bob,

Thanks for your comments but you missed my comment about configuring word
pairs. Absolutely the words and/or phrases MUST be configured by someone
fluent in both laguages (in my case english/chinese). the neat idea about
the concept was no source code changes and no reprogramming for Unicode etc.

The in between program would be Unicode compliant and just replace the
english with chinese. ie. English_Word-Array[37] would be replaced by
Chines_Word_Array[37].

Thanks for the response anyway.

DaveM

:

Agree with Bob I. The purpose is to convey the real
essence of your correspondence. Simply replacing one
word in English for a word in Spanish may change your
message and generate many chuckles on the receiving
end.

Language translation by electronic means is in its infancy
despite huge advances in computing technologies and
resources.

If you're interested in translating from English to Chinese
(or vice versa) for your own products (software, ad copy,
fire extinguisher instructions), definitely employ a Chinese-
speaking translator who can capture the essence of your
message properly so that your potential client base is able
to fully comprehend your points/instructions.

Good luck.