Pc, Convert To Thai/type In Thai To Print Document?

[maxbus1]

I've found before online a site that you can type in english and it will translate to thai. A Uni student created this for a project, but I cannot find it anymore. My wife needs to translate a document into thai, and print it in MS Word for the thai consulate. I don't know where to begin, but I'm sure that my Windows software cannot be updated with the official language upgrade. I'm only looking for a simple download to get this done. ANY help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. max.

[meadish_sweetball]

It's not clear to me exactly what you need... if you just need to be able to type Thai on the computer, all legit versions of Windows make it possible to install Thai in the operating system and just use a regular keyboard to type it. If your regular keyboard does not have Thai characters, you can easily get hold of a keyboard map showing where the Thai letters are located.

It seems that you may not have a legit copy of Windows though?

There are virtual keyboards available online, where you click with your mouse on one Thai letter/sign at a time. It should be possible to use one of these, and paste the text into Microsoft Word.

Check out Richard's keyboard, for example: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordi...i/entry_new.htm

[mangkorn]

I've found before online a site that you can type in english and it will translate to thai. A Uni student created this for a project, but I cannot find it anymore.

One reason you can't find the site is probably because even its creator had to admit that it was an abysmal failure, and a stupid idea. Computer translation of anything more than one word at a time is impossible, and even that fails half the time; a program is incapable of understanding context or intention, and cannot properly choose between different meanings, etc.

If you do find a program that claims it can translate documents, you will get an unintelligible mess, and possibly with unintended consequences. Might also end up as a laughingstock with the "translation" pinned to the bulletin board for the amusement of the office staff.

Hire an educated human being with a brain, and experience in the field.

If you want to pay nothing, that's exactly what you'll get in return.

[meadish_sweetball]

www.thai2english.com is very helpful for translation of single words, but the user must be proficient enough in both languages to be able to choose the correct synonym from the ones given.

As mangkorn says, machine translation projects, up until this point and for the foreseeable future, are unable to produce something more reliable than an approximation of the meaning of a document... not being able to distinguish shades of meaning, context, and sometimes producing completely unacceptable constructions and/or grammar.

Attempts are being made to develop other types of translation software, taking their basis in large corpora (bodies of text) of existing quality translations, comparing the input sentences and constructions with previously translated material and suggesting new constructions based on this. Provided there is a material large enough within the specific field of translation, this method could be combined with automatic translation formulas such as those currently used, and based on artificial intelligence calculating probabilities and using word and phrase recognition to determine context... we could eventually get something that produces reasonable results.

Given that AI technology keeps getting more sophisticated, and given that cognitive science makes some breakthroughs in finding out the mechanisms of the human brain, perhaps we will see something decent enough in our lifetime. But even then, I doubt such a program will be able to match an experienced human translator. There are simply too many separate skills and sensitivities involved.

[mangkorn]

Artificial intelligence is just what it says: artificial.

Programs can do data-based calculations, but that is not intelligence: it's science.

Science will get you to the moon, but it can't tell you what to do once you're there. And it will never help you in any way to describe to average people what you saw and experienced.

Language translation, even of dry bureaucratic documents, is not science: it is fine art.

No one should ever confuse the two.

Good translation is poetry. Great translation is great poetry.

But bad translation can barely even aspire to be excruciatingly horrible poetry.

And there are very few things more ugly, and embarrassing, than horrible poetry...

Edited October 20, 2007 by mangkorn

[maxbus1]

Artificial intelligence is just what it says: artificial.

Programs can do data-based calculations, but that is not intelligence: it's science.

Science will get you to the moon, but it can't tell you what to do once you're there. And it will never help you in any way to describe to average people what you saw and experienced.

Language translation, even of dry bureaucratic documents, is not science: it is fine art.

No one should ever confuse the two.

Good translation is poetry. Great translation is great poetry.

But bad translation can barely even aspire to be excruciatingly horrible poetry.

And there are very few things more ugly, and embarrassing, than horrible poetry...

Yup, you guys are correct. I will not be using a pc for providing a document in thai.

I found sites before online, but nothing that was pastable to MS Word.

The wife has to turn in a translated marriage cert to get a name change on her passport in BKK, I TOLD her not to change her name, but she did it anyway. Now, lots of problems......

Thanks all for the help.