Rocket German Community

Hi,

Does anyone know of any good and accurate German translating website? I need something that will translate whole paragraphs, not just a word at a time.

Thanks

Alberto.

Hi,
I have to admit that I'm not really a fan of online translators, because even those that claim to translate sentences, often return incorrect answers!
Sometimes one word in English will require two words or more in German or vice versa. There is one expression in German that you will hear a lot when you're in a restaurant or shop: "Sonst noch etwas?" which simply means "Anything else?". The online translator translated it as "Otherwise still something". Each single word is translated correctly, but put together it just doesn't make sense.
Babelfish.altavista.com seems to be reasonably good when it comes to easy sentences. I hope that helps you a little bit.
Nathalie

I came across another online dictionary which seems to be quite good: www.leo.org

I also find that the online translators are not always accurate. I find that google translate is as good as any of them and it is very easy to use. I sometimes also use the translator to roughly check if my german writing has bad mistakes in it! :
http://www.google.com/translate_t

By the way, you can always post your vocabulary/ translation or grammar questions on the bulletin board and we will answer them for you.

jimmy wrote:I also find that the online translators are not always accurate. I find that google translate is as good as any of them and it is very easy to use. I sometimes also use the translator to roughly check if my german writing has bad mistakes in it! :
http://www.google.com/translate_t

please, take a look at www.freetraanslation.com it's not very good to translate a very big texts, but i have translated some emails with it and it worked fine for me, because i saw mistakes and corrected them.

I have been using the translation widget built into Mac OS X with good results. It is not word by word, it tries to do it by sentence.

Hi there,

I'm moving to Switzerland in September and am in the process of making contacts for work (and of course feverishly learning Deutsch!).

I'm writing to a recruitment agency in English but would like to put a sentence in German at the bottom. I used Google translate (as recommended below) for the translation but would really like you to sense check it please.

Many thanks,
Martha

English: I am learning German at the moment and no doubt will learn even faster once I am in Switzerland.

Deutsch: Ich erlerne, daß Deutscher im Augenblick und kein Zweifel sogar schneller erlernen, sobald ich in der Schweiz bin.

Hi Martha,

that sounds great (not what google translated, but that you move to Switzerland )

Switzerland is a beautiful place with stunning scenery. I'm sure you will have a great time there.

Now, what came out of the google translation process is something like this:

"I learn, that Germans at the moment and no doubt even faster learn, once I'm in Switzerland."

Kind of close to the original meaning

That's the problem with translation programs. Because of semantics no program will ever be able to translate phrases perfectly.

You are best to write:

"Ich lerne im Moment Deutsch und sobald ich in der Schweiz bin werde ich bestimmt noch schneller lernen. "

or

"Ich lerne im Moment Deutsch und ich bin mir sicher, dass ich noch viel schneller lernen werde sobald ich in der Schweiz bin."

or

"Ich lerne im Moment Deutsch und ohne Zweifel werde ich noch schneller lernen, sobald ich in der Schweiz bin."


"Mit freundlichen Grüßen" (Kind regards)

Nathalie

Dear Nathalie,

Thank you so much. It sounded so funny when you had translated it back to English.

No doubt I will be back on the forum shortly for one thing or another. Ich lerne gerne!

Thanks again,
Martha

Hey Martha,

no worries. Feel free to post as many questions as you want

Hear from you soon!

Nathalie

Hi,
I'm only a learner of the German language, but I am using a program put out by Babylon to help with my translations, and when I put your example "Sonst noch etwas?" into it, the answer came back as "Anything else?"

BrianJ wrote:Hi,
I'm only a learner of the German language, but I am using a program put out by Babylon to help with my translations, and when I put your example "Sonst noch etwas?" into it, the answer came back as "Anything else?"

That's because it is a very common phrase and the program is designed to recognize them.