Why don't online language translators work properly?

Question

I just tried to convert a Russian sentance into English with Babelfish, and it makes almost no sence at all. And of course, it didn't translate all the swear words either, it just switched gandon, shalava, pizda, and ebanyy from cyrillic to latin.

Why can't babelfish work properly, and why doesn't it translate swear words?

I know it's not translating directly either, because when you translate an English sentance to another language, and then back to english, it completely screws it up.

Is there a reason why online translators don't work properly?

Answer 1

With all the fascination for the achievements of the modern technologies the best computer is still the human brain so far . We learn all the rules and exceptions and styles of our language, we recognize damaged (on any level: Lexis, Morphology, Syntax) phrases and reconstruct them, we build up our experience the way no computer can compete with the human mind. Yes, we are imperfect and irrational - that's why we are more flexible and unpredictable, and so is our language. Computers work on the basis of logic (remember the books of A.Asimov with his constant reminding that robots are slaves to the logic, while the humans are rational). Computer programs become more and more complicated, but computers will never create anything by their own initiative or learn from their mistakes unless their software get updated.



The indirect proof to this statement are the problems of highly functional people diagnosed with autism. Their brain functions much more like a computer than a brain of an average person. They understand world much better through the symbols and they have problems with speech, fantasy and making choices (well between a green jacket and a red one when both are of the same size and for the same weather - so choosing the colour which "looks better on you" becomes an act of torture for a person with autism). They have troubles with making an ordinary drawing creating their own images and not reproducing the patterns they saw before etc. They shut down in themselves because their brain fails to deal with our weird world - well, that's a sketch, not the whole picture, of course!



But that's how the translator program works: the Lexis is downloaded, the possible word combinations are downloaded, the possible Syntactic constructions are downloaded - and the program fits the real text in all proposed patterns. By imperfection of the translation you can see everything what is overlooked or there is no way "to explain" it to the computer. Somebody mentioned here the conjugations are missing - well, there are conjugations in English~Russian Google, but it fails all the time to translate back the same phrase properly:

ты идёшь в школу (human Rus.) - you go to school (google Eng.) - Вы ходили в школу (google Rus.) . Google turned The Present Tense int The Past Tense in such a simple sentence.



It's all about programming and difference between what is logic, what is rational and what is real life.

Answer 2

The online translators translate words directly without necessarily conjugating verbs or considering the structure of the sentence. Languages don't all share the same sentence structure. An example of that would be "Io ho una nuova machina rossa." (that is my best attempt at Italian btw) which literally translates to "I have new car red." But in English we wouldn't organize a sentence like this. The correct English would instead say "I have a new red car." The reason why some words don't change in the translation often is because it is a verb that needs to be conjugated and it just isn't in the translator, it could be one that is purposefully left out (i.e. your swear words) or one that is spelled wrong.

Answer 3

If you want to become a professional in doing face then Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery from here https://tr.im/1nJ9E could be the manual that you need.

The center of the Realistic Pencil Portrait Mastery eBook is 3 secrets that guaranteed to give you a possiblity to attain the level of a professional of this art. They're concentrating on picking right up expertise of rendering of all face characteristics; knowing also probably the most diminutive sights in every facial quality; and learning to see what is hidden to others.

The reference substance may keep you active for weeks if that you do not mind drawing celebrities.  The facial features images offer you sense of the deviation of skin features.  The images are huge and very sharp – great to bring in other words.

Answer 4

They can't handle inflected languages. What they do is what someone who doesn't know a language would do if he simply looked up each word in a bilingual dictionary and wrote down the first thing he saw for each one. When I taught Latin 101 and had students translate into Latin a sentence like "They do not like wine," some of them would write, "Illi facio non amo vinum" instead of "Vinum non amant." Online translators do very much the same thing, evidently unable to cope with the different forms of the nouns and verbs, etc., not to mention the word order.

Answer 5

If online translators would work properly, all students studying a language would always be cheating by using it instead of their own brain!! Therefore, it is much better for you to use your own brain instead of cheating, as all those who try to cheat with those dreadful "translators" (I wouldn't even call them as such because they are so bad!) will get caught anyway!

Answer 6

How do you know are swear russian words? XD text me if you want to know the translation :)

Answer 7

Google translate works better