translator apps

[phycokiller]

has anyone got an alternative to google translator. I find it worse than useless. Often takes 30 minutes to get yes/no answer to a basic question and even then I dont know if they understood it. surely there is something better?

[Sheryl]

There are apps specifically for Khmer to English and Khmer to Thai that you can download from Google Play Store (for a phone).

 

Whatever software is used, it helps to input the English in a form similar to Khmer grammar structure i.e. leave out articles and most prepositions, don't conjugate verbs, adjectives after the noun, omit pronouns unless essential. Simpler is best.

example:

 

NOT:  Do you have any X?

INSTEAD: Have X?

NOT: Did you go to the store yesterday?

INSTEAD: Yesterday go store?

 

etc

[phycokiller]

8 hours ago, Sheryl said:

There are apps specifically for Khmer to English and Khmer to Thai that you can download from Google Play Store (for a phone).

 

Whatever software is used, it helps to input the English in a form similar to Khmer grammar structure i.e. leave out articles and most prepositions, don't conjugate verbs, adjectives after the noun, omit pronouns unless essential. Simpler is best.

example:

 

NOT:  Do you have any X?

INSTEAD: Have X?

NOT: Did you go to the store yesterday?

INSTEAD: Yesterday go store?

 

etc

Im not 100% sure but I suspect all those apps just tap into google translates api, so they have the same results, just a different user interface. but if anyone has any experience otherwise I would be interested, but yes, thanks for that advice. what i find is I cannot understand the english translations from khmer as well, and because I cant ask i dont know if they understand anything I say. Im finding that just translating the individual words works better then googles attempt at translating sentences. for example when I put sore in a sentence google reads it as soap, and this is writing rather then spoken so it has no reason to do that. Its very frustrating

[kkerry]

See if Microsoft Translator works with Khmer.

[KhaoNiaw]

To be honest, you're not likely to do better than Google. The resources they've put in and the access they have to input to 'train' their apps is massive. So they're probably making more headway than anyone else in the development of apps.

[phycokiller]

4 hours ago, KhaoNiaw said:

To be honest, you're not likely to do better than Google. The resources they've put in and the access they have to input to 'train' their apps is massive. So they're probably making more headway than anyone else in the development of apps.

probably, but I they are a bit behind with cambodia and its possible someone else is doing it. I was looking for an app where cambodians could learn english, I found one in google and none in the apple app store. I guess its not a huge market but theres certainly an opening there for somebody. 

[Sheryl]

The problem (or one of the problems) is that google translate and similar apps are based on the sentence structures of western languages. so they go seriously haywire when they encounter languages with very different structures.

 

Thai and Khmer have pretty much the same structure.

 

I actually do pretty well with Google translate for both languages but that is inputting only key words, never writing whole sentences (I speak both languages so it is usually just  a few  words I am at a loss for).  It also helps to do a back translation

 

But for sure leave out all the unnecessary words (words that should not be translated - most prepositions, all articles etc) and avoid verb conjugations. Enter the English in Thai/Khmer sentence construction,  or enter the essential words one by one.

 

If you think Google translate is bad with Khmer, try it with Arabic, it is a complete mess.

 

 

[phycokiller]

yes, I can usually understand what the subject is but not what they are trying to say about the subject. Ive found that if you put each word on a separate line it will just translate the words rather then sentences, but thats quite tedious to do