I completely agree with Teja, the original story was perfectly understandable. As an English speaker, you don't have to try very hard to make the final translation yourself.
Personally, I would welcome posts from non-English speakers that were made both in their mother tongue and their own English translation, one below the other. We might all learn something then.
Good question on methods used for translation.
I'm one who finds these very rough translations to English rather poetic. Like with other poetry, I'm not sure I always fully get the point, but I enjoy trying. It's a little like working a good chess puzzle.
OK, now I have to ask. Speculation on the use of the word demonic in the example given?
Did Tal really sometimes sign Fisher's name for fans, claiming that he beat him so many times that he had the right? Funny, if true, and even if not true.
"Tal was admirable demonic man! The crowd follow him!/Am I mention, that woman loved to got his chess lessons?..
/Everyone wanna get his autograph! He signed his name, ...and Fisher's name, too...
'Why you did it?', someone asked...
'I beat him so many times, that I has a right to sign for him, also...' "
I once had someone a little further down in the conversation after I had said I was a manager reply, "I think taskmaster is a good job for you" or similar. At first I took it as a dis. But then I realized he probable looked up manager in his dictionary and inocently translated it back as taskmanger. A rather revealing perspective on the word and the job description. Made me think.
I presume this is Portugese? I further presume that it translates to:
"Mmmm, Superpotatos are delicious- I want to eat Superpotato."
I don't speak Portugese, so I'm inferring based on its similarity to Spanish.
Next, read the translation that Freetranslation.com rendered, and compare:
"MMM, Superpotato delicious sounds - are going to eat me superbatata"
Which would you really prefer? The issue here is that both the syntax and the tense of the words are all completely wrong. I see the argument in a couple places that these messy and innaccurate translations are akin to poetry, or wax poetic; with that logic, a car which came from the factory with the roof inside out and the front & rear bumpers switched would be more artistic, albeit less functional, than one produced the way it was designed, and a song played accidentily in reverse would be more musical than if it were played correctly. If what you read is poetic, than I'm sure it would be far more poetic if tranlated properly.
Now, let me be clear, if someone personally tried to translate something out of their mother tongue and it resulted in incorrect English, that would still be palatable, intelligible, and appreciated; however, there is nothing endearing about a machine mangling the earnest lingual efforts of a contributer.
Por ejemplo, esto es mi "esfuerzo serio" (taken from a translation site) para escribir en espanol:
Echecs es un mar en que un elefente puede banar, y un mosquito puede beber, pero cuando en esto trato nadar, me ahogo!
Hay gente que puede traducir esto frase mejor tan yo? Dimelo!
Y gracias... =P
I skipped over reading most of the threadjack as I'd like to simply answer the question at hand. The piece quoted in the OP was written by AWARDCHESS. Now, from experience, it seems that AWARDCHESS is a really nice guy who is very enthusiastic about the game of chess and likes to share his knowlege of chess-related anecdotes. I, for one, appreciate his enthusiasm for the game of chess and for the chess.com community.
Now, if you look at his profile you will notice that he is from Russia. The Russian language is very different from English. One of the glaring differences is that Slavic languages lack articles; in Russian, (for example) "car", "a car", and "the car" all mean the same thing (you would just say "car" and which one you mean would be determined from the context). In some of his posts, he puts "the" in front of a person's name (for example, he once referred to "Tal" as "the Tal"). It's understandable if you think about it; someone told him that "the" goes in front of a noun referring to a specific thing. So he figured "Tal" refers to a specific person, so I should put "the" in front of it. As native English speakers, we know that this is one of the exceptions to this particular grammar rule - but he doesn't remember that so he simply follows a grammar rule he was taught. His use of articles in this case is incorrect, but it's very logical from a person whose native language lacks articles and is trying to figure out where to put them in an English sentence!
Many of his other errors can be explained by things like this. It doesn't bother me at all - his message is perfectly clear. Now, I agree that babelfish does a rather poor job of translating things. But if someone on chess.com writes something which contains a few grammatical mistakes, and his first language clearly isn't English, let's cut him some slack.
Oh, and I have an idea - how about if we all write a few sentences in Russian and have AWARDCHESS tell us how good our grammar is?
It may take a little more effort to understand some posts from people who do not speak english as a first language. It has been rare that I was not able to get the gist of what they are trying to say. I actually find it humbling that they are multi-lingual and here I am only being able to speak english. I guess you could have other members translate the posts, but I don't see that actually working.
Hmmm. Maybe it was someone who is learning English who is posting the Forum.
ADK
I'm sure you took a foreign language in high-school. Now try to rewrite your original post in that foreign language, and let the native speakers poke fun at you... It'll put your accusation in perspective.
English is my 2nd language, but I did put a lot of effort into learning it. At the same time, I don't mind people making grammar or spelling errors, as long as I understand the meaning. That's the purpose of communication as far as I see it, but I've always been "content-over-form" kind of person.
And no - I don't think the particular example you just quoted demonstartes automated translator use. It would be far less coherent if that was the case.
"It'll put your accusation in perspective."
Gosh, why is everyone imagining offense on Bowens' part? Kee-rist.
We get it, sheesh, you're soooo enlightened because you support english-as-second-language speakers. Good lord. We all do, sure. I'm glad people like AWARDCHESS are on the site, of course.
Do you think he would "speak" more fluent english if he could? Of course he would.
You'd think, for all of these apprently fluent english speakers posting here, that they wouldn't all get Bowens' original post so wrongly.
It's about being able to be understood. It is a testament to guys like AWARDCHESS' (even his username is clearly a hilarious misunderstanding) efforts that we do understand him, BUT
at the same time, a lot of the grammer he uses is actually LOLable.
I roll my eyes at all of you "champions" who think that you're going to come off cool by "oooooh look how much I support this other language speaker" "oh my god, just imagine if you had to write in HIS language"
... give me a break.
I can't help but conclude that, at least in this thread, the babelfish translation appears to be understood better than the suggestion that was made to resolve the confusion coming out of such translation.
As someone who has English as their second language I do agree with Cloy that the first post feels pretentious and, especially in the beginning, sounds downright hostile. I do not believe that this was the intent of the author and accept that a genuine suggestion was made to resolve a problem said author feels is present in certain forums. I applaud the author for his effort and I enjoyed reading the post.
For various reasons I don't believe the problem raised in this forum to be a problem at all. I feel that by reading and interpreting posts that are obviously not written by native English speakers I get a better understanding of the person writing the post. It may tell me something about their background/culture and even allow me to identify people who speak my native tongue. Additionally it teaches me about language and interpretation.
Naturally there will always be posts that are truly lost in translation. My advice would be to either skip them or ask for clarification from the poster rather than have a third party translate it. I believe the benefit of this form of communication to far outweigh just knowing what someone means (which one can never be sure about to begin with).
I'm sure you took a foreign language in high-school. Now try to rewrite your original post in that foreign language, and let the native speakers poke fun at you... It'll put your accusation in perspective.
English is my 2nd language, but I did put a lot of effort into learning it. At the same time, I don't mind people making grammar or spelling errors, as long as I understand the meaning. That's the purpose of communication as far as I see it, but I've always been "content-over-form" kind of person.
And no - I don't think the particular example you just quoted demonstartes automated translator use. It would be far less coherent if that was the case.
Wow...
So please, if you want to contribute to a thread, please read all of it before responding. At no point have I been poking fun at ESL people; in fact, if nothing els, than this thread was intended as a way to increase their contribution to the site. Therefore, Eternal21, I will not reply to your "response," but rather direct you to the beginning of this thread (as in, my original post) with instructions to READ.
Also, I'd like to reiterate that being able to get the gist of something, and being able to read and understand a coherent, well articulated thought are of completely different value. In the original example, I got the gist of the story; Tal, at some point, taunted Fisher by signing his name as an autograph. However, the story could have been so much more significant to me if the details were discernable. If the Chess.com community could start helping those with trouble translating, well, translate, then I think a great service would be done to all.
Furthermore, let me remind you all that this site is American based and owned/maintained by an American company, so the presumption is that English is its Native Tongue. I do not read poorly translated posts and feel humbled by the fact that I speak only English (though I would obviously love to speak many languages), but I do feel dissapointed that, due to poor translation, contributions that I think have potential, such as AWARDCHESS's Tal/Fisher stories, are inaccessible to me.
So again, and hopefully for the last time, I remind you that I am NOT poking fun at ESL members; I AM suggesting that we think of ways to improve their translation efforts/needs.
Maybe we can use volunteers to translate. When someone posts a comment on his or her language, a volunteer can translate the comment. Chess.com can add a link on the side that says, “Translate” then the volunteers click on it and translate the post.
By the way, English is my second language and I used to feel bad when someone made fun of me because of my bad grammar or my very thick accent but sometimes it was I who did not understand what they really wanted to say and it also has something to do with your self-esteem.
I really don’t think that the purpose of this thread was to offend anybody but to help understand each other better. I used those websites (babelfish, google, etc. etc.) in the past and their translations don’t make much sense on either way Spanish-English or English-Spanish.
Regards.
To me, the beauty of this site is its diversity. There are all kinds of people and all kinds and levels of players and each contributes something different and something unique to the whole. What does it matter if someone's English is irregular or not proper or ungrammatical as long as they contribute something to read that is interesting and even funny and cute in its own way.
I understand perfectly the story about Tal. Rendering it into proper English would lose much of the freshness and individualism and might even come across stilted and boring. The author has his own way of expressing himself in English and I found the story enjoyable, both in the content and in the style it is presented. I don't know if that is the result of babelfish or some other translation programme, but it is certainly refreshing and different in the way it's told. I think everyone should be free to express themselves how they like, even if their English is not good.