Spanish speakers?

dwdunn(akaDan) wrote:Greg, I've had minimal exposure to Spanish, mostly from recent contact with Latino workers at my job; but going thru this word by word (in the original Spanish & the translation to anglaise) it looks fine and reads well auf Englisch. I guess one positive is that Spanish is so widespread and current now in the US that computer or internet translations should be fairly reliable. (As opposed to other languages where certain words might have various meanings & you'd have to choose the english word that most accurately fits the meaning) I would assume there might be very minor disagreements, like the start of the last paragraph "should" read as "trade agreements and new markets" (acuerdos comerciales y nuevos mercados) instead of "new markets and trade agreements"; but that would be inconsequential as to the meaning. I would expect Albert might be a better judge tho, given his academic area and probably exposure to a good deal of Latin. FWIW

dwdunn(akaDan) wrote: derrrrr Never mind.
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Albert Rossi wrote:Greg, sorry I've been remiss here ... I have not been well the past few days and am just now getting back on my feet.

I do not know Spanish, unfortunately, and even though I do know other Romance languages and Latin, there are always subtleties which may escape.  Let me take a look at this when I get home.  Offhand, it looks like this is botched, for instance:

to "end the strike by whatever means were available." :: a "fin de la huelga por todos los medios estaban disponibles".

pressure to end -- is an infinitival complement.  The machine thought this was a simple preposition (to [the] end), it seems to me.  Should that not be an infinitive finir?  And that may not be the best way to express 'end' in this case.  For instance, in Italian, one would prefer something like "porre fine a" [put an end to], or at least "terminar" (like French terminer).

Not to mention that estaban, if it belongs there, probably needs the subjunctive.

Anyway, if I can I'll take a closer look later this evening.

Albert Rossi wrote:OK, so remember that I really am operating by deduction/induction over the Romance languages I know.  You really need to have a native speaker check these all out. Notwithstanding, I shall offer some observations which you are free to take as you wish.

'::' means I suggest changing what's on the left to what's on the right.

First paragraph:

a "fin de la huelga por todos los medios estaban disponibles" :: para "poner fin a la huelga por todos los medios disponibles"

y americano los intereses.  ::  y los intereses americanos
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Second paragraph (this is the most problematic one, I think):

en planos  :: en aeroplanos -- I believe 'planos' means mathematical/geometrical planes

como él entró más y más :: cuándo él entró más y más  -- 'as' here is temporal, and if Spanish is like Italian, using 'como' here would sound very colloquial

en preparación de la guerra ::  en preparación para la guerra [?]

Fue también un muy escaso  :: Fue también un bien muy escaso -- "commodity" [bien] is missing here (did the computer commit scribal homoioteleuton??)

con Colombia siendo la fuente principal :: siendo Colombia la fuente principal -- the absolute with 'with' explicitly expressed does not sound kosher to me; I give here the structure as it would occur in Italian

de antes de la guerra de Alemania :: para Alemania (durante el periodo) de antes de la guerra -- three 'de's in a row are awkward, and at any rate, the prepositional complement into which the possessive 'Germany's' must be transformed is too far separated from the noun it modifies, 'source' 

y el único productor :: y ahora el único productor -- missing the equivalent of 'now' in the original

de la nación eje  :: a quien la nación del Eje  -- needs a relative pronoun, not a preposition [see the following]

podría mirar en absoluto para el suministro :: podría en absoluto recurrir para el suministro -- 'mirar' would be like 'look to the future'; and in any case, the relative pronoun was missing (because, of course, it is implicit in English ...); I cannot tell whether "suministro" is the correct word here or not.

contrabando de recursos naturales -- I have a feeling that despite lexically equating the gerund 'smuggling' with the noun 'contrabando', our program did not realize the positional need for an article from context.  I would render this "el contrabando de recursos naturales"
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Third passage:

This is the least problematic.  I take it "celebrar una conferencia" is idiomatic.  Also, "Éste contó con todos" -- surprising how our program, which has made so many other typical syntactic and lexical blunders, found this periphrasis; I can only assume it is correct.

I think Doug Hofstadter is still right on the money.  A very good measure of how close we have come to automating intelligence is translation.  We've got a long way to go, it seems to me, at least when translating more than a phrase is at stake.

I hope this helps a bit, Greg.  Feel free to ignore it, for as I said, I've never studied nor spoken a word of modern Spanish (though I have studied a few medieval Spanish texts, with grammar and dictionary in hand; but that was long ago).

greg parker wrote:

Albert Rossi wrote:OK, so remember that I really am operating by deduction/induction over the Romance languages I know.  You really need to have a native speaker check these all out. Notwithstanding, I shall offer some observations which you are free to take as you wish.

'::' means I suggest changing what's on the left to what's on the right.

First paragraph:

a "fin de la huelga por todos los medios estaban disponibles" :: para "poner fin a la huelga por todos los medios disponibles"

y americano los intereses.  ::  y los intereses americanos
----------------------------------------

Second paragraph (this is the most problematic one, I think):

en planos  :: en aeroplanos -- I believe 'planos' means mathematical/geometrical planes

como él entró más y más :: cuándo él entró más y más  -- 'as' here is temporal, and if Spanish is like Italian, using 'como' here would sound very colloquial

en preparación de la guerra ::  en preparación para la guerra [?]

Fue también un muy escaso  :: Fue también un bien muy escaso -- "commodity" [bien] is missing here (did the computer commit scribal homoioteleuton??)

con Colombia siendo la fuente principal :: siendo Colombia la fuente principal -- the absolute with 'with' explicitly expressed does not sound kosher to me; I give here the structure as it would occur in Italian

de antes de la guerra de Alemania :: para Alemania (durante el periodo) de antes de la guerra -- three 'de's in a row are awkward, and at any rate, the prepositional complement into which the possessive 'Germany's' must be transformed is too far separated from the noun it modifies, 'source' 

y el único productor :: y ahora el único productor -- missing the equivalent of 'now' in the original

de la nación eje  :: a quien la nación del Eje  -- needs a relative pronoun, not a preposition [see the following]

podría mirar en absoluto para el suministro :: podría en absoluto recurrir para el suministro -- 'mirar' would be like 'look to the future'; and in any case, the relative pronoun was missing (because, of course, it is implicit in English ...); I cannot tell whether "suministro" is the correct word here or not.

contrabando de recursos naturales -- I have a feeling that despite lexically equating the gerund 'smuggling' with the noun 'contrabando', our program did not realize the positional need for an article from context.  I would render this "el contrabando de recursos naturales"
----------------------------------------

Third passage:

This is the least problematic.  I take it "celebrar una conferencia" is idiomatic.  Also, "Éste contó con todos" -- surprising how our program, which has made so many other typical syntactic and lexical blunders, found this periphrasis; I can only assume it is correct.

I think Doug Hofstadter is still right on the money.  A very good measure of how close we have come to automating intelligence is translation.  We've got a long way to go, it seems to me, at least when translating more than a phrase is at stake.

I hope this helps a bit, Greg.  Feel free to ignore it, for as I said, I've never studied nor spoken a word of modern Spanish (though I have studied a few medieval Spanish texts, with grammar and dictionary in hand; but that was long ago).

Albert,

you are simply an amazing individual.

Greg, I'm not writing a 3-part book which will put this case in an entirely new light.  That is something amazing, in my view.

One of the reasons I used the microsoft translator was because of claims that it was approaching an "intelligent" system. That said, there was a warning against using it for very large jobs (i.e. books).

Okay. This gets put on the backburner until I can get a human translator to do it.

I know it's costly, but I personally would not want to publish anything done using AI.  Language programs have made amazing strides over the past 10 years, but they are still a long way from being able to do what you are expecting them to (let alone translate poetry or fiction).  This is not to diminish the marvel of a program capable of doing what it does.  But they still remind me of the Monty Python phrase-book at times ("I would like to fondle your buttocks").