Comparison of Free Online Chinese to English translation engines

[roddy]

As a result of playing around with this I wound up doing a quick comparison of some online Chinese to English translation services. Overall I'd say that Google has the best translation, but in places is beaten, notably by open-source contender Adsotrans.

Please note, this is entirely unscientific. Anyone who wants to do a more scientific version is welcome.

经济适用房变豪宅，中低收入者的住房权益被剥夺，教训不可谓不惨重。在经济适用房建设中，政府通过政策调控，引导开发商开发固然重要，但更重要的，是加强对于经济适用房建设、分配过程中的监管，确保已建的经济适用房真正起到解困的作用。

Source. First article on Xinhua this morning.

Worldlingo.com results (after giving up on full webpage translation, which caused errors, and copying and pasting in the text):

The economy is suitable the room to change the mansion, low income earners's housing rights and interests are deprived, teach it may be said not seriously. Is suitable in the room construction in the economy, the government through the policy regulation, the guidance developer development is no doubt important, but more important, is the enhancement is suitable in the room construction, assignment process supervising and managing regarding the economy, guarantees the economy which constructs to be suitable the role which the room plays truly helps people overcome their difficulties.

Google Translate results:

Of housing change house, the low-income housing and deprivation, which is quite a heavy lesson. Housing construction in the economic application, the government adopted policies to regulate and control, guide developers development is important, but more important is to strengthen the economy of housing construction, the process of monitoring the distribution to ensure that the construction of housing has been truly a relief role.

Bestiland results:

The room can be applied, the economy changes a bold house, it strips of low China interest of the income person house and the lesson can not be called the thing which isn't very big. In that the room can be applied and that the economy constructs, the government is development's one, controlling through the policy(, approving). By the room of finding out, developing a quotient and being important and being however more important of course by the economy Because it strengthens about that it is possible to apply to construct the process and to watch and that the inside of allocating manages, the already built economy secures that the operation which solved difficulty really can be achieved, that it is possible to apply a room.

Altavista results: (NB Almost identical to Worldlingo.)

The economy is suitable the room to change the mansion, center the low income housing rights and interests are deprived, teach it may be said not seriously. Is suitable in the room construction in the economy, the government through the policy regulation, the guidance developer development is no doubt important, but more important, is strengthens regarding the economy is suitable in the room construction, assignment process supervising and managing, guarantees the economy which constructs to be suitable the role which the room truly plays helps people overcome their difficulties.

Adsotrans.com results.

affordable housing changes mansion ， Chinese low-income person housing rights by deprive ， lesson cannot speak of is not miserable again。 inside affordable housing construction ， government by way of policy control ， introduction developing studio develops admittedly its true that is important ， but more important ， are to strengthen regarding affordable construction , division process oversight ， ensure already built affordable housing truly to start to go to escape penury function。

Now, taking this clause by clause (ie, each punctuation delimited phrase in the original.) I'm only going to do the first sentence though, this is time consuming.

1) 经济适用房变豪宅

Only adsotrans and google gets the meaning of affordable housing, but Google tries to add in a relative clause and gets confused. Adsotrans win.

2) 中低收入者的住房权益被剥夺

Worldlingo does a great job with this, only missing the 'mid and low income' bit, which none of the others get either (although Adsotrans makes an intelligent mistake with 'Chinese'.) Worldlingo win. Note that Altavista includes the 中 (poorly) while stablemate Worldlingo omits it.

3) 教训不可谓不惨重。

Bestiland does very well on this one. Google also translates this phrase well, but it's incomprehensible in context. Bestiland win.

But if we take the best three clauses and put them together we get . . .

affordable housing changes mansion ，low income earners's housing rights and interests are deprived, which is quite a heavy lesson

Which is not bad at all . . .

[Mugi]

As a human translator, I'm encouraged to see that machine translation is still so bad!

[Lugubert]

It might be an interesting exercise to feed those engines with some of the stuff that us professionals are handed by clients.

Cell will not have explosion even if abused

(My understanding: Accumulator cells will not explode if mishandled)

Next screen will be display by automaticity

(The next screen will appear)

and one of my favourites, which would be at least as funny in any "translation":

Where available, you can get 24 hour service.

(From a computer company, known all over the world. Not to embarrass them, I won't even tell you their big colour.)

[geek_frappa]

经济适用房变豪宅，中低收入者的住房权益被剥夺，教训不可谓不惨重。在经济适用房建设中，政府通过政策调控，引导开发商开发固然重要，但更重要的，是加强对于经济适用房建设、分配过程中的监管，确保已建的经济适用房真正起到解困的作用。

i curious to read the human translation of this text (from a student and native speaker). The commas throw off many machine translations, but i think there can be a hybrid between human and machine translation, once the translation is entered on one side of the internet, the other side can give the user what they want to understand. ... kind of like BitTorrent, but for translation... ... ok... i'm going to shutup now... (sh)