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Language vs. Translation

Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 3:35 am
by EvilGrins
More than any other UT/Unreal forum I'm on I see people either surprised what they said came out one way due to a translator or no mentions of it but the sentence structure strongly suggests they either used one or are new to typing in English.

So, what language do you speak/type in prior to translating it here?

I speak/type English, and some ½-way decent Pig Latin.

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 7:49 am
by Dr.Flay
Always a valid point in any forum.
It should be included in forum profiles as a standard, but It is a rare thing as forums are usually in one language.

If I were to enable the forum at my UT site, members would have that on view (if filled out), as their profile is connected to a larger community site.

People could just include it with their "Location" info as an alternative (I may very well start doing that)

The Cornish language died in last century, so I speak the language of our owners. English.
We still use a few Cornish words in everyday speech.
It was a cross between the Celtic Welsh (UK) and the Celtic Breton in the north of France.
I live in a European port town so I know tiny bits of German, and French and even smaller amounts of Spanish.

You have to also bare in mind that is not always the translator at fault, as if someone types gibberish in any language it will spit out a worse mess.
Unfortunately it all comes down to good grammar, syntax and context. Which is a problem if you are dyslexic or poorly educated etc.

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 8:30 am
by papercoffee
You can't compare the German grammar with any other European grammar ... *sigh* why dose it to have so kompliziert.

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 9:17 am
by Vankuss
papercoffee wrote:You can't compare the German grammar with any other European grammar ... *sigh* why dose it to have so kompliziert.
I had a relative in Germany, and he said me your text is like CapitaLized SomeWhere, lol. He explained also why, but can't remember.

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 9:40 am
by papercoffee
Yeah we capitalize every noun and names ... "Das Haus ist voller Leute die Geburtstag feiern" - "The house is full of people who celebrate birthday"

another difficult thing, if a verb belongs to the noun, we put the verb behind it.

Geburtstag = birthday
feiern = celebrate

"Geburtstag feiern" - "celebrate birthday"


Pretty confusing, right? And this is only the easiest problem ...I don't want to bother you with our countless pronouns. :omfg:

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 11:08 am
by Feralidragon
I speak portuguese as primary language, and a little bit of spanish.
Obviously I also speak english, and although this may sound shocking I prefer english to portuguese. English is pretty much the easiest language in the whole world, very clean and direct, easy to learn, short words, no special symbols in certain words (like ç or á and others), same verb conjugation for almost everything, very small amount of grammar rules, no genders for most nouns, so it's a bit disgusting when I see some native english speakers in the web making worse mistakes than me or any other non-native speaker.

I write pretty much everything in english, unless it's an email to portuguese people (still I make tons of mistakes though, sometimes I don't know if I should double the consonant or not for example in certain words).

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:10 am
by Dr.Flay
English is a "bastard" language.
It is a mix of the original British languages and; French, Latin and Greek.
It is a pick 'n' mix of the convenient bits of other languages, and growing all the time. If we don't have a word for something, we just use someone else's
In Germany there is no word for "squid" so it is called an "ink-fish". The English also did not have a word for squid, so just called it squid.

Lots of older words and phrases are now much shorter. eg. "11 o'clock" would have been "11 of the clock" and a Carriage (Orig.French) is now a "Car"
Unfortunately there are lots of very common words that sound the same but mean something else, eg. Tale and Tail. Their and There. Bored and Board.
However it does allow for very creative writing, as you can mess with the context of words etc.
We are supposed to capitalise names and titles etc, but people are getting lazy.

America is doing their own thing with English, and this can cause confusion with people who learned real English-English, which is why in India the call-centre staff are taught one or the other.
Whenever I hear an American say "Chillax" (Chill+Relax) I want to punch some-one! here is a pointless invention. Take 2 words and join them so they now make a longer word that has not changed its meaning in any way. If it now meant "more than relaxed" or "extra relaxed" I (and many Brits) would see the point.
I totally avoid using any Cornish words or phrases online, unless talking to another Cornish person. Modern Cornish is a sort of English/Cornish mix, but built around the way we talk.
eg. "Gson, sava geek ovn" in English is "Go on, let me have a look at it". We tend to run words into each-other or remove them completely, or even add in extra ones, so direct translation is odd.
My Gran is a good one for putting in extra words. She would say "Wer ee goin (pronounced like coin) to ovn yo?" which means "Where are you going?" but the direct translation is "Where are you going to of then yes?". It works with the "to" added, but the last 3 words are totally extra!
The 1 main word of real Cornish we still use all the time is "Emmet". It is Cornish for "Ant" and is what we call English holiday-makers :mrgreen:
We also use the word "Drekly". This is used the way the Spanish use "Manjana". eg. "I am having a break, I will do it drekly". Or in my own case "the map CTF-GangOfFrontCity will be finished drekly " :wink:

And finally the 1 word of Cornish the entire English-speaking world uses probably every day...is..."Stuff" :o
"Stuff" was the old Cornish word for the ore-bearing mineral from the tin mines. It made a hell of a mess, "there was stuff all over the floor" (you can see why it has been used) :tu:

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:55 am
by papercoffee
lol Cornish seems to be really fun... not to translate but to speak.

Oh and we use many different glued on words ... Kindergarten is one of the most popular.
But this are the longest:
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

btw. what language did squid come from?

Re: Language vs. Translation

Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 6:00 am
by Dr.Flay
Cornish sounds a bit like Captain Barbosa from Pirates of the Caribbean (original English dialogue obviously).

Wow, those are mind-blowing!
The Welsh language also seems to have huge words. They have one of the longest place names in the world (New Zealand has the longest).
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
You can hear it being spoken here http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

I tried with a friend a few years ago to find the first use of Squid in English, as like many things was not common to the British diet.
They were used for their ink originally, and that was going back to a time when where you were in the British Isles, you would have had a local name for it.
Animals tend to vary most. Lots of old English words are of Saxon origin and when the Normans ran the place food and animal names started to change.

The harder you look, the harder It gets hard to define "what is an English word ?"