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Translation Tool – Traduku Posted by on Oct 28, 2009 in Esperanto Language

Since I’m usually averse to Internet translations, I’ve been somewhat reluctant to mention a tool called Traduku. If you’ve ever had experience with Babelfish, it functions much like the (in)famous web translator. Insert some text, or a URL, into the appropriate field, click a button for the desired language, and check the results. The page where it translates for you has a neat feature where you can run your mouse over the given text for a list of synonyms or other possible translations.

After playing with a few sentences, I’m not entirely disappointed with Traduku. Like all translation tools, however, I strongly caution you to proofread what it gives you…Who knows what its algorithm might be giving you! Here are a few sample translations of sentences I tried, so you can judge for yourself. Of course, a firsthand check might be the best course of action!

“I doubt that this works.” – “Mi dubas ke ĉi tiu labor.” (Probably should be “laboras,” or “laborus.”)
“Do you mind if I test?” – “Ĉu vi permes-as, ke mi ..u testas?” (Interesting hyphenation there.)
“Splendid.” – “Grandioza.” (One-word translations seem more reliable.)

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Comments:

  1. Gunnar Gällmo:

    Yes, but in English “splendid” may be either an adjective or an adverb; in Esperanto, unlike English, we must always distinguish between the word classes, so only the connection can decide whether it should be “grandioza” or “grandioze”.

  2. Keith:

    Yeah, Traduku certainly has problems. BTW, Google Translate is much better than Babelfish.

  3. Lucia:

    Let’s see like MyMemory translate “Splendid” from English To Esperanto:

    http://mymemory.translated.net/s.php?q=Splendid&sl=en-GB&tl=eo-XN

    I suggest to try MyMemory a collaborative archive where machine translation meets human translation 🙂

  4. pqs:

    It should be: Mi dubas ke ĉi tio funkcias.

  5. Fajro:

    Try Apertium

    Apertium is a free/open-source machine translation platform:

    http://apertium.org

    http://wiki.apertium.org/