English to Chinese Translation Software

[Alma J Wetzker]

James McDonald wrote:
> 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.

Through this whole thread I keep thinking "All your base are belong to us". 
If at all possible, stick to wetware for language translation.

     -- Alma