More accurate equivalents to Google Translate?

[Wardie1993]

so i use google translate, thats OK for short sentences, but when i translate a longer message into japanese then back into english to check it makes sense a lot of times it doesnt, and when i translate japanese sentences from japanese users on youtube into english i find a lot dont make sense either, so are there any sites like google translate, quick and easy to use and dont need to register to use, but are also accurate?

 

[Mike Cash]

Japanese doesn't play nicely with machine translation for some reason. It takes less time and effort to learn to read Japanese than it does to try to make sense out of the garbled gibberish that Google Translate puts out.

 

[Wardie1993]

very true, i translate it back to english to see if it makes sense and im like "eh? surely japanese people wont understand that!", i try to get me sentences right, even though i use google translate (since its super hard to type japanese characters on an english keyboard), as i keep thinking itll make me sound dumb if they have rubbish grammar and so forth

could it be the japanese sentence formation which makes it go strange when translated back into english?

i have taken to taking little bits of sentences and putting them together, i dont know if thats a grammatically and linguistically acceptable thing to do but at least it looks OK on google translate and Japanese people seem to understand what I mean

 

[Foocha]

Most languages just have a lot of things that don't translate directly into anything in English. Japanese and English are just two very different, complex languages, so using translator sites will only ever help for very simple phrases. So whether your sentence formations are correct or not, Google will still make it sound funny a great deal of the time. At least every time I've been unsure about my grammar, people are usually kind when they are correcting me, so I don't think you should be too nervous about it!

 

[nekojita]

It would be better to use something like ALC - you can't type in exact sentences, but you can use keywords to find Japanese-English sentence pairs which are similar to what you want, then use those as a guide/help when constructing your own sentences. For example search 'more accurate'.

It's not hard to type Japanese on a standard UK-style keyboard - you just need an IME and a bit of practice (making sure you know how to type んい vs. に, etc.) There are standard IMEs that come with Windows/Mac, and also Google produce one of their own. If for some reason you can't install the software on the computer you use, there is also a website, Ajax IME, although it's a bit slower than a normal IME.

 

[BrianLewis]

I use Jquicktrans for an electronic dictionary. The window is large enough to put a large amount of text, although I have never tried it. You would have to know a bit of grammar to string it all together since the output is simple dictionary definitions. It's freeware by the way.

There use to be a website called Babblefish that preceeded Google translate. I don't know if it's still around or if it functions.

 

[Wardie1993]

ta for the suggestions ill take a look at them

 

[Davey]

Not something for long sentences, but for words I always use Kanji Romaji Hiragana Convert which gives me the hiragana and the meaning in English as well.

 

[Wardie1993]

thanks ill have a look at it

 

[Mike Cash]

And don't forget that if you're actually studying Japanese you can post questions you may have about it.