Last week I came across the Google translator. You type in your native language and the translator spits out the Thai equivalent…..maybe.

I sent a trial message to a mate in LOS and asked his wife to check it out.

Today I got his reply, gave me the best laugh I’ve had in a while:

Hi Tim,

I will let you decide how good the translation tool is, I asked Malisa if she could translate your Thai message for me , she went on and on for about five minutes saying things which had little or no relevance to what you had written in English. When she stopped I said "I see it does not work then" she replied "why what is it supposed to say?" when I told her she said "yes, it can mean that too!!!" I'm at a loss to say any more, you can decide for yourself!!

John

Give it a try if it doesn't work it should at least provide some entertainment

Yes English-Thai-English leaves a little to be desired HAAAAAA

Google has a long way to go to get the translation somewhere close.

Fun can be had with an electronic version of Chinese whispers, translate a sentence through several languages and back to the original, results can be interesting, particularly if you involve Thai or Korean.

Seriously, I would never use a translator to translate into a language I don't read, best to let the recipient do that. They're great for foreign websites though.

The US army developed speech recognition (Thai to English) many years ago including some of the dialects. I have the report somewhere on me disc.

About 2 years ago I saw a docu about a German firm that was about to release for sale a Blackberry sized device that did something similar and you could even take a picture of a sign in Thai and it would tell you what the meaning was.

I use it to translate things in Thai on, say, facebook, etc, but I wouldn't rely on it to translate a legal document or contract.

I think it works for getting the gist, but Thai sentence structure and grammar often leaves the translation being a little cryptic.

Funny at times though. There's a notice on the notice board in my condo building that was obviously written in Thai and then translated using Google translator. The result is the most convoluted, backwards and cryptic notice.

I think it's about not allowing pets to do their business on the premises.

(I think they mean 'Business' as in toilet, not setting up a som tam stand..)