Post by: Frances144 on October 26, 2008, 02:42:15 PM
Can anyone on here translate my advert into Danish for me? Please pm me if you can.
Thanks
Frances x
Post by: Gregg on October 26, 2008, 04:08:30 PM
http://www.bablefish.com/
Post by: Frances144 on October 26, 2008, 04:44:57 PM
Post by: Paddy on October 26, 2008, 04:58:11 PM
Frances, until you find a native Danish speaker, I'd just put the ad in in English. A very large number of Scandinavians (and other Europeans) speak astonishingly good English.
BTW - Babelfish is now owned by Yahoo and it's found here:
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
Just for fun, I put in "Shetland pony stud for sale" - English to Portuguese. Then I took the resulting Portuguese and put it back into English:
"Screw prisoner of the pony of Shetland for the sales"
Not quite.And Babelfish doesn't do English to Danish.
Post by: jwboyd on October 26, 2008, 05:23:40 PM
Post by: Paddy on October 26, 2008, 06:16:25 PM
Post by: Gregg on October 26, 2008, 06:40:28 PM
The link I gave to Bablefish was a copy 'n paste job from the site's URL, but I didn't go exploring beyond that. And if you don't try to make it look foolish, it probably doesn't make as many mistakes.
Post by: Highmac on October 27, 2008, 02:57:52 AM
But, as Paddy says, most Scandinavians have very good English. Also, if the ad is in English, respondents are less likely to expect to have contact with someone who speaks Danish! I can picture you picking up the phone and having someone speaking very fast Danish on the other end
Depending on the tone of your ad, you could add a line on the bottom - something like "Apologies for using English, but my school in Britain did not teach Danish..."
Or, if you have other languages, mention them since even if they don't have good English you might have another language in common they feel more confident using. On a school exchange trip to Holland back in the 50s I stayed with a family where the son (the swop) was learning 7 languages - his sister was learning 9, the extras being Latin and ancient Greek. As they said, who outside Holland learns Dutch?Post by: Frances144 on October 27, 2008, 04:59:50 AM
So, we want to do a spot of "one up manship" to show that we actually were not dragged up from under a stone, which is how they make us feel on a regular basis!
Post by: Highmac on October 27, 2008, 05:38:05 AM
Post by: Mrious_be on October 27, 2008, 11:30:36 AM
QUOTE(Gregg @ Oct 26 2008, 11:40 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
And what languages does Marcel speak fluently???
Marcel speaks Flemish (Dutch)
But I can ask Smiley if she wants to do some translation, she's Danish.
Let me know what the text is Frances?
Post by: Gregg on October 27, 2008, 02:06:19 PM
QUOTE(Mrious_be @ Oct 27 2008, 11:30 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
But I can ask Smiley if she wants to do some translation, she's Danish.
Jackpot! Translating from English to her native tongue should be a snap.
Maybe the problem with Bablefish is that it's going the other way.
Post by: Mrious_be on October 27, 2008, 03:01:36 PM
So when it comes down to translating entire sentences they mess it up in a way that the order of the words are wrong.
Plus I can also imagine they don't keep track of "feminine" and "masculine" word use.
Throw everything together and you might come up with a pretty... euhm... idiotic translation
I'll send a notice to Frances to ask what she wants to get translated.
I don't know how urgent she needs it and if it's a lot or not.