Thai language translation

[12DrinkMore]

I use google translate and thai2english to translate the gibberish. Also Facebook attempts to translate what they write.

 

Problem is that I only get gibberish in the translations. Anybody who has tried, will know exactly what I mean.

 

1. Has anybody found something better?

 

2. Are Thais deliberately undermining attempts at translating Thai?

 

Maybe they don't want the world to know the level of stupidity that abounds here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bannork]

Try learning Thai and then you may realize  that like native speakers of English and folks everywhere, Thai  people often use slang and idiomatic language when conversing with each other.

Know what I mean squire? The guv in our office, you know what? He's all over the place .Comes in wasted in the morning,  yapping on about his Thai bird  giving him a hard time for being out on the piss every night.

Translates in Thai as-รู้ว่าฉันหมายถึงนายหรือไม่? Guv ในสำนักงานของเราคุณรู้ไหม เขาไปทั่วสถานที่ต่างๆรายได้หายตัวไปในตอนเช้าและร้องตะโกนใส่เรื่องนกไทยของเขาทำให้เขาต้องออกแรงปัสสาวะทุกคืน

Retranslated back into English as-- Know I mean you? Guv in our office, you know? He went all over the place, lost his income in the morning and shouted at his Thai birds, causing him to urinate every night.

Best to learn the language.

 

[12DrinkMore]

3 minutes ago, bannork said:

Try learning Thai and then you may realize  that like native speakers of English and folks everywhere, Thai  people often use slang and idiomatic language when conversing with each other.

Know what I mean squire? The guv in our office, you know what? He's all over the place .Comes in wasted in the morning,  yapping on about his Thai bird  giving him a hard time for being out on the piss every night.

Translates in Thai as-รู้ว่าฉันหมายถึงนายหรือไม่? Guv ในสำนักงานของเราคุณรู้ไหม เขาไปทั่วสถานที่ต่างๆรายได้หายตัวไปในตอนเช้าและร้องตะโกนใส่เรื่องนกไทยของเขาทำให้เขาต้องออกแรงปัสสาวะทุกคืน

Retranslated back into English as-- Know I mean you? Guv in our office, you know? He went all over the place, lost his income in the morning and shouted at his Thai birds, causing him to urinate every night.

Best to learn the language.

 

 

Yep, but even newspaper articles, which presumably ease up on the vernacular, translate into nonsense.

 

[bannork]

Learn to read Thai then. it's not difficult if you are motivated.

[sturdyd]

Translation by machine is incredibly difficult. Sure, slang, but also homophones, homographs, homonyms, etc. Words in general that are similar, or the same, but that can have very different meanings based on syntax (actually these things give many of the posters on this very forum a lot of trouble! ) Here's an example I remember: "Time flies like an arrow." Most native English speakers would have no trouble discerning the meaning. But a machine translator could have considerable difficultly with it. A machine might interpret the sentence as an instruction to gather a bunch of insects and a stopwatch and then time them as if they were arrows. Well, that hardly makes sense does it? And that's just a five word sentence. Add the many and varied rules of usage ("beautiful woman" vs. ผู้หญิงสวย or dama bonita) and you've got quite a quagmire. While I'd love to see a decent translation program, I doubt that I will in my lifetime.

[FritsSikkink]

"Are Thais deliberately undermining attempts at translating Thai?

Maybe they don't want the world to know the level of stupidity that abounds here?"

 

That is a pretty stupid question/remark.

 

Google translate is only good for translating single Thai words. It is pretty hard to develop something when the Thai words are not separated by spaces.

As others said , learn the language of the country you are living in.

[12DrinkMore]

2 hours ago, FritsSikkink said:

Maybe they don't want the world to know the level of stupidity that abounds here?"

 

That is a pretty stupid question/remark.

 

Have you never come across the phrase, "Farang speak Thai, no good, he know too much"?

 

There was/is an earnest sentiment behind it. 

 

I used to hear it quite regularly, but I have to admit not in the last few years. Maybe because I no longer mix with many Thais on a social basis. I find life is more peaceful that way.

 

 

[FritsSikkink]

1 hour ago, 12DrinkMore said:

 

Have you never come across the phrase, "Farang speak Thai, no good, he know too much"?

 

There was/is an earnest sentiment behind it. 

 

I used to hear it quite regularly, but I have to admit not in the last few years. Maybe because I no longer mix with many Thais on a social basis. I find life is more peaceful that way.

 

 

Only from people who try to rip you off, normal Thai's like it when you at least make the effort.

[Briggsy]

The underlying problem is the very considerable syntactic differences between the languages and differences in viewing the world and thus the way we express that in language.

 

Google Translate is quite successful when translating one West Germanic language to another West Germanic language e.g. Swedish to English but as the differences grow between the languages, the automatic translations falter.

 

e.g. All European languages have tenses which tell us, for example, this is an activity in progress, this is a finished action with a present result. Thai often completely ignores this although it can be expressed somewhat unnaturally.

 

Thai is full of references which denote the relationship of the speaker and the audience, who is more senior, how are they related, the level of formality used, etc. English often completely ignores this although it can be expressed somewhat unnaturally! e.g. "you" "I" and that's it.

 

The problem is the distance between the languages.

 

Also as bannork pointed out, Facebook Thai is a very difficult area to start in, full of slang, abbreviations, context and so on.