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Originally Posted by Tonynocker
http://world.altavista.com/If you are looking to translate a phrase that you cant find on the web. This sight [sic] is great when you are preparing for the DR.
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DR1 occasionally gets people who try to fake Dominican Spanish in their posts by using a machine translation service like Alta Vista. But they can be spotted almost immediately by anyone who actually speaks Spanish. Little things like very small ambiguities in the way you word the original phrase in English cause incorrect translations.
I'll let you find the rest, but as an example:
"No officer I don't want to spend the night in jail" to
"Ningún oficial que no deseo pasar la noche en cárcel"
This is nonsense. That's because "No officer" is being translated to "Ningun oficial" which does
not meaan "No" as in the opposite of "Yes". In this case "Ningun oficial" would be closer to "Not any officer". "Ningun" means "no one"!
It's even confusing trying to explain why that's wrong. Did you get it?
Had you entered:
"No! Officer I don't want to spend the night in jail" you get back: "¡No! El oficial I no desea pasar la noche en cárcel" which also is incorrect, note the "I", but closer. Change it once more to
"No! Officer, I don't want to spend the night in jail." and you finally get something that's not laughable
"¡No! Oficial, no deseo pasar la noche en cárcel." Although the still the words used are a bit off for common Dominican Spanish.
Tom aka XR
(10)
For the non-spanish speaking
Babelfish "es peligroso en las manos incorrectas" [sic]
