Translation

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Guest

I've read several questions/answers here and they all say that Word does not
translate from English to Spanish and vice versa.

So what exactly is the "Translation" feature in Word 2003 actually used for?

Thanks

~hagen
 
hagen said:
I've read several questions/answers here and they all say that Word
does not translate from English to Spanish and vice versa.

So what exactly is the "Translation" feature in Word 2003 actually
used for?

Thanks

~hagen
Click to expand...

I think it's best used for amusement. :-)

When you request a translation, the text is passed to a web service run by
WorldLingo. Like all machine translations currently available, its results
are... ummm... of variable quality. You might use it to get the sense of a
passage that a native speaker of the "other" language wrote, but you
wouldn't want it to translate your text for something you're sending out,
especially if it's business-related or sensitive.

Let's take a simple example. The English sentence "I do not want a fish" is
adequately translated by the service to the Spanish sentence "No deseo un
pescado." Now take that Spanish sentence and ask to translate it back to
English. The result is "Nondesire a fish." The idea is there, but I wouldn't
call it a good translation. (By the way, you'll get the same result from
http://babelfish.altavista.com.)
 
Thanks Jay.

Jay Freedman said:
I think it's best used for amusement. :-)

When you request a translation, the text is passed to a web service run by
WorldLingo. Like all machine translations currently available, its results
are... ummm... of variable quality. You might use it to get the sense of a
passage that a native speaker of the "other" language wrote, but you
wouldn't want it to translate your text for something you're sending out,
especially if it's business-related or sensitive.

Let's take a simple example. The English sentence "I do not want a fish" is
adequately translated by the service to the Spanish sentence "No deseo un
pescado." Now take that Spanish sentence and ask to translate it back to
English. The result is "Nondesire a fish." The idea is there, but I wouldn't
call it a good translation. (By the way, you'll get the same result from
http://babelfish.altavista.com.)
Click to expand...
 
You can also use the Translate feature, one word at a time, to get Spanish
equivalents for English words (and vice versa) within Word (without recourse
to the Internet).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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