Free Online Translator, Slang and Other Nuances of Language

by Auzzie
(Sydney)

I am using a free translator HowtoSayin, but this is not helping me. Sometimes, my friends from abroad say the words in short forms and the translator is not able to translate them. So I don't understand what my friends are saying in their language. So I am not able to chat with them.

Sometimes this translator translates the words wrongly. For example, baiser means kiss, but it translates the word as fucks. This is so horrible. And it can't translate keywords such as fuck, seduction, or abuse or sexual words, or slang words. Is there a way out of the problem?


Answered by www.language-translation-help.com:

I am afraid you will not find a machine translator (be it a free online translator or a paid translation software package) able to translate abbreviations (ex, tmr – tomorrow, plz – please, yor – your, bcum - become), colloquial and figurative language, dirty and slang words, etc. in a comprehensible manner.

The performance of machine translators is based on certain algorithms. These algorithms cannot think and feel, and read between the lines. The 50-year not-so-successful history of machine translation makes it clear that in the near future machine translators, both free and paid, will perform badly on texts with poor grammar and punctuation, colloquial and substandard vocabulary, phraseological units and idioms.

However, for truth's sake I must say that machine translators still CAN BE a useful tool in overcoming language barriers. All you and your friends need to do is take into account that machine translators have big limitations and you should "follow the rules of the game" to get translations of acceptable quality from machines. So try and avoid the following in your texts:

- Misspelled words
- Abbreviations and acronyms
- Incomplete sentences
- Bad punctuation
- Bad grammar
- Slang, jargon, idioms, neologisms

As a result of avoiding or reducing these problematic aspects in your messages, the quality of translations will improve. Otherwise, you are doomed to getting painfully bad translations from any machine translator.

In addition, you can ask for some help from bilinguals and professional translators on specialized language/translation forums or use the Freelang website (http://www.freelang.net/translation/index.php) to get some free translation help.