上班族必備軟實力

[If you do not speak English, I am at your disposal with 187 other languages, along with their various dialects and sub-tongues. – Robby the Robot]

There are some free automated translation websites. The quality of their output is far from perfect, but due to customer feedback, they are continually getting better. Users can suggest improvements in translations of words and phrases. It has been very useful to people like me who never could become proficient at using the Chinese language.

Translation involves much more than knowing what words mean in other languages. It requires a deeper understanding of how the words are used. There often is not much logic in what people decide a word or phrase may communicate. Chinese phrases are often just a few words from a longer name or sentence. Instead of saying 國立臺灣大學; they just say 臺大; instead of saying 7-11, they will just say 7. A translation machine needs to be aware of that.

非常好色 is the name of a NewSoft product, but if you put it into the translation engine, it comes out as something inappropriate. It will say “very horny” or “very lecherous”. We all know that is not true. It should say “Print Magic”. Many translation programs have a feature that allows users to make suggestions to improve the translations. This is how they can improve their accuracy.

 
Sometimes you can see clothes sold in Taiwan that have English words written on them. The clothes designers often don’t care about whether the words make sense at all. They just want English on their clothes, because it gives them an illusion of being sophisticated. Most of these were made before they had machine translation, but they sound very much like what comes out of an Internet transaltion engine.

Our science fiction movies and TV shows always have some kind of machine that automatically translates various languages so that everyone can understand each other. Our computers are slowly getting to the point that they will be mimicking the fictional situations. That’s exciting. Danke für reading.