Saturday 16 October 2010

Translation Tools

Translation tools are more and more widely used these days. Both GOOGLE and Microsoft have translation services. You can access the latter directly from Word 2007. But: Beware of using them for anything much more than getting a quick general understanding of a document:

Take a look at this. It's part of the original English of our first newsletter.


So, we’d suggest you create a Twitter account, and become a follower of the EMUPLD twitter, so that you receive regular updates and learning advice throughout the year.
You’ll also receive news through the website and twitter of extra seminars and workshops and other events to help you with your language learning.
All of you are also invited to keep up with research at EMU, by creating an account at the EMU research newsletter website at: http://researchnewsletter.emu.edu.tr/
When your own research is advanced, you can even consider publishing some of your work in the newsletter.

I then used a well-known translation service to translate this to Arabic. And then the same service again to independently translate the Arabic version into English. Here's what came back:

http://twitter.com/emupld
Therefore, we would like to suggest a Twitter account and become an affiliate of Twitter Amobld, since you receive regular updates and learning advice throughout the year.
You will also receive news via a website and Twitter additional seminars, workshops and other events help you in your language.
You all are invited also to keep up with research in economic and Monetary Union, by creating an account at site newsletter research in economic and Monetary Union http://researchnewsletter.emu.edu.tr/:
When your search, you can consider to publish some of your work in the newsletter.

This alone should suggest that using translation tools as any kind of basis for academic writing is definitely not a smart idea. 

No comments:

Post a Comment