English to Chinese Translation Software

[James McDonald]

Chong Yu Meng wrote:

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> Thanks for your observations on Chinese, dep ! :) I just need to clarify
> a couple of things :
>
> First, even though there are several dialects of Chinese, there are only
> 2 written scripts -- Traditional and Simplified. Traditional Chinese is
> used by Hong Kong, Taiwan and quite a few other places where overseas
> Chinese have migrated to. Simplified Chinese is used by mainland
> ("Communist" to you Yankees) China and a few other places, like 
> Singapore.
>
> There is a common spoken language that most Chinese (regardless of their
> dialect group) will understand. This is called "putong hua" or "common
> language", and Mandarin is the proper term for it, I believe. Though I
> frequently refer to it as Chinese anyway. It is hard to find an analogue
> in English -- the closest I can think of at this time is Pidgin English
> and American/Queen's English.
>
> Translation software can sometimes mangle the meaning badly. Especially
> for technical subjects.
>
> In any case, I believe it is relatively inexpensive to hire someone in
> China to do the translation for you. A lot of Chinese I used to work
> with can speak and write very fluently in English and Chinese. There was
> this one engineer from Shaghai who spoke English with an American accent
> ! Actually, a good place to look for someone to do the translation
> would be Shanghai.
>
Thank you for this. It actually answers most of the back brain questions 
I had aswell...

There seems to be some translation software out there... 
http://www.systransoft.com how well it works probably won't be known 
until the recipient is rolling around laughing on the floor.