I ask questions

see here

After Ben asked here if “square” and “Spießer” have the same meaning, I asked some online translation services. The translation of the German term “Spießer” revealed following:

I present the not-winners of the day for this specific term (I do not use term loser with purpose):
IATE (result)
Google Translator (result) and
Babelfish (result)
(or could be said following ? IATE was so honest to tell nothing, instead telling something wrong or something which does not make sense - or does there exist a term “spiesser” in English ?)

From the results one could infer perhaps “Spießer” should be translated with “bourgeois” or “babbitt” ? But I will ask better a native English speaking person to help me out here. Perhaps someone who knows the context of the term since our recent slogan game

Erkan YILMAZ

btw: why do I post about such things ?
- to help Michael and others to assess the quality of online translation services
- I am curious and might gain some interesting info (e.g. do some services use the same database: Beolingus and ergo4u; Google Translator and Babelfish ?)
- you never know where and when you can see a bug. E.g. is the behaviour of Google translator and Babelfish wrong ?
a. From my point of view: yes.
BUT: “A bug is anything about the product that threatens its value. And: Quality is value to some person (who matters).” (James Bach and Michael Bolton, Rapid Software Testing, slide 12, slide version 2.1.3)
And I am not sure, if I matter at Google
So far, I am not quite sure, if there exists really such an English term “spiesser”. So let me ask someone, because I do not know (also: cost value factor of asking a native English speaking person is better than me now doing a search - well: it is also a little late - I hope you excuse me for that). Let’s see what I can investigate afterwards.
b. From your point of view: ?

edit 2007 May 04:
I got a ping and “square” seems the best translation (when used to refer to a person)
and this would make LEO the winner of the day

edit 2007 August 21:
there is an updated graphic available - which includes also dict.cc and woerterbuch.info - see here

Below you will find some German slogans.

And ? Where is the relevance to testing ?
Well, do you agree, that during testing we arrive at situations where we do not have always every info ? Why is this ?

One explanation could be:
Information transmits faster, if there is included pictures/sound or it is packed meaning into the sentences (e.g. by using proverbs, schema, concepts, categories, analogies, metaphors, associations, …).
But the problem may be, that recipients do not have access to this additional info (e.g. slogans from other countries).

So, read these slogans please. And find out if you can guess the products they advertise for (and eventually the companies) !

1. “Hey Dad, when I grow up, I also want to be square.”
2. “We wake up earlier.”
3. “We can do everything but speak Standard German.”
4. “With the second eye you see better.”
5. “Firm as a rock in the surge.”
6. “We demand and bring forward personalities.”
7. “Try it in a gentle way.”
8. “It was never so valuable as in these times.”
9. “If it makes you beautiful…”
10. “Well, is today already christmas ?”

DO NOT CONTINUE - STOP - THINK ABOUT THE SLOGANS !

the history to this post:
I read here some slogans from USA. From that there awoke the idea to collect some slogans from German speaking countries and present them to non-German people.

BTW:
- here you can find info that helps you (but for the sake of learning, click it later - if ever).
- since the target group is non German people, I will not translate this post yet into German

Erkan YILMAZ

I was reading Ben’s article “Slogans are models“. And there appeared the term “picker-upper”, which I did not know.

I used my favorite service LEO first. But this did not help much (I could have worked me up from the verbs, but …). Then I used dictionary.com and I got an explanation (I hope it is the right one ):
picker-upper: something that restores one’s depleted energy or depressed spirits

I take this now as an opportunity to search the term in some of the English to German services (see also Michael’s article):
Google Translator
Babelfish
LEO
Beolingus
ego4u
PONSline
IATE
Merriam-Webster

Unfortunately all have failed in providing me a (good) translation (I searched for “picker upper” and “picker-upper” ). Also my paper dictionary from PONS with 170000 terms could not help me.
It could appear from this, the term is not so much used. Actually I can not believe this. Imagine: after a long night in the morning probably some would need a picker-upper.

So, the winner THIS TIME is dictionary.com

BTW: let me provide some associations for “picker-upper”:
coffee; a hit into your face; red bull; a kid being tortured; a pretty woman; a joke; …

Erkan YILMAZ

At the moment the Languages of Europe group is collecting some greetings and proverbs in different (European) languages: see here.
So far the list contains 15 languages (sorted alphabetically) - 3 languages with sounds (marked with green color):

Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish Chilean, Turkish.

If you would like to help, please drop a message (e.g. with another translation; providing some sound files - you can also give some links to other already existing online files; finding errors; …).

The web is so monotone without sounds, give it some taste with your voice.

Erkan YILMAZ

BTW:
here is a great page for getting much more languages for some greetings.
BBC offers essential holiday phrases - with mp3 sound files.

Before you read this, keep in mind, that I speak the German language better, because I grew up with it.

I try to give you as reader articles which are as good as possible (of course considering cost and value). Lately I have started to translate my English articles into German (reason here). While doing this, I recognized, that I could have written some articles better.

So, if you think you have nothing to add anymore (well, there is always a better version possible) to an article or you do not want to continue or other reasons, then translate it into another language.

This is my first article which I wrote multilangual on the same day:
1. first in English and
2. then translated into German
3. while doing step 2, I had some new ideas on the result of step 1

I think this will help you to think again more on some words. Because while translating, you are forced to think more on the meaning of one word.
Sometimes I see, that I use English words by instinct – perhaps because I read them a lot and I am used to them (you see the vicious circle?). But when I try to translate them, I sometimes stop, because I do not immediately find the pendant in German. I know what it means, but the German translation hangs on my lips. Somehow it does not find the way out
Then I use a tool – e.g. I use an online translation service (LEO). I am offered several translations. And since German is a language where you can express with different meanings, this gets interesting. With this I get other associations activated in my brain.

You could say, it costs time – this is true. But try it and tell me, if you and your article profit from it or not.

Erkan YILMAZ

I was talking with a friend and at some time he told me a German sentence – I was impressed, because it was grammatically correct and also the pronunciation was good. Later he told a 2nd sentence – and again I was impressed (but this time the pronunciation was not so good ). When I asked about the German sentences, he told he used Google translator. I told that Google translator must be good.
But the next 3 translated sentences proved me wrong – I could not get the meaning at all. Also not, when I translated the sentence word for word back to English (reason: I assumed Google would translate it like this). So I had to take back my initial assumption.
But did I have enough data to say something at all on the quality?

So, we agreed, that I do some further testing on this.

How did I proceed?

1. Search some background info on Google translator (e.g. it was fed with 200 billion words).

2. But well, I did not want to read at that time too much and also maintain my curiosity, so I continued like this:
get me some random sentences.

I went to yahoo and searched for “english site” and took this website for getting me some random English text. Reason: this is a site especially for learning and teaching English – as it tells: “A web-site for teachers and learners of English as a secondary language from a German point of view”.
So, my intention here was: to get something for the benefit for Google, as I assume this kind of text would be better translated (do not get me wrong: for testing I would take later some text which is e.g. more technical, nested, … to challenge the application more )

3. Then I decided to take about every 5th sentence from there (why every 5th? well, which would you have used?) - here are the 16 sentences.

4. So, I started to translate these sentences with Google translator to German (since I have no version info on Google Translator for rechecking later: at 20.3.2007, 21:38 German time (GMT+1)). The sentences which (from my point of view) were translated perfect, I marked with OK - see here the results.
So this makes until now a ratio of about 48% (2 out of the 5 sentences from the conversation and 8 from the above 16 sentences).

Then I translated the remaining 8 not-OK sentences how I would like them myself (using one time LEO) - see here.

Actually the tests are not yet finished, I just gave some random input (16 sentences only - from my point of view easy sentences) to get me an impression on the quality. So, we have now a number - 48% - whatever this might tell. I wonder how much other online translators (Babelfish uses Systran, PROMT, … ) would achieve? But does this prove anything so far? It just tells: for these sentences it had this result - how good this works for each one of us is another case.

But well, it is late and perhaps you can help me testing? Otherwise I will continue soon.

I searched (of course in Google ) for other old bugs from Google translator. Found e.g. these: hit, hit, hit

Erkan YILMAZ

BTW:
Michael has listed here web services for English/German + vice versa translations. My all time favorite is LEO.
Michael plans to write a series on translation tools - so drop by his blog.