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Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

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Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#71

Post by another-dave »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #41
p49k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make things even more confusing, “half two” means 2:30 in the UK and Ireland.

And this is very likely the reason for the mistake. See, Google Translate seems to take a shortcut to translating between language A and B, by translating from A to English and English to B. For instance, for the last five years or so I've been seeing GT translate the Greek word for "swallow", the bird, to the French word for "to swallow", the verb [1]. In Greek and French, the two words have nothing in common (Greek…

> And this is very likely the reason for the mistake. See, Google Translate seems to take a shortcut to translating between language A and B, by translating from A to English and English to B.

Although in this case, if you translate "halb zwei" from German→English it correctly translates it to "half past one".

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#72

Post by Momquist »

nraynaud wrote: post #43

you had to be better at school! (in France, the good students are sent to learn German as a third language, and the bad ones are sent to learn Spanish as a third language, knowing German is a marker of class)

I can confirm that in my generation, at least, learning German was seen as a more elitist choice than Spanish. Latin/Greek were optional and very few chose to study them. Ironically at the time I felt that Latin classes were easier, and even more interesting than modern languages, e.g.: we were reading already Cicero in our first year.

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#73

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #41
p49k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make things even more confusing, “half two” means 2:30 in the UK and Ireland.

And this is very likely the reason for the mistake. See, Google Translate seems to take a shortcut to translating between language A and B, by translating from A to English and English to B. For instance, for the last five years or so I've been seeing GT translate the Greek word for "swallow", the bird, to the French word for "to swallow", the verb [1]. In Greek and French, the two words have nothing in common (Greek…

Surely Google have a French–German pairing, though? There must be lots of works available in both languages.

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#74

Post by mattmanser »

rconti wrote: post #63
p49k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make things even more confusing, “half two” means 2:30 in the UK and Ireland.

Does it? "Half two" would certainly not be common in the US, but certainly folks are familiar with "quarter of 2" which would mean 1:45. If you told me it's "half two" I would assume it means 1:30, not 2:30, as a native (american) English speaker -- although I have taken a couple quarters of German in college so perhaps the German is sneaking in a little bit?

Is that an auto-correct typo or do you say "of"? It's "quarter to 2" in the UK. And "quarter past 2" means 02:15/14:15. It's also perfectly normal to just use "quarter to/past" without an hour, I might say "let's meet again at quarter past", referring to 12:15 if the time were 11:37.

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#75

Post by asveikau »

pjmlp wrote: post #59
asveikau wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird thing because you'd be hard pressed to find two languages as similar as Spanish and Portuguese, and whatever this paper has to say on the topic it'd be inevitable that the English translation in the middle would be "lossy". I sometimes get disappointed when people suggest that machine translation is a substitute for actually learning the languages. It's true that we have limited time in our lives to s…

Actually there are quite a few, if you include the variants spoken across the peninsula, Galician, Mirandese and Aragon are even closer to Portuguese than Spanish. :)

Yep, I was aware of some of those, not trying to defame the good people of Galicia or anything, just trying to say that Iberian Romance languages are all pretty similar, and notwithstanding many exceptions the probability of easily finding nearly 1-to-1 translations of any given text is much higher than for English where you would inevitably lose more information in transit.

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#76

Post by franze »

rconti wrote: post #69
franze wrote: post #26

i hate this kind of time communicating in austria there is "viertel zwei" - quarter two which in one part of austria (vienna) means 1:15pm (or 1:15am), in the other half (90% of austria) it is understood as 1:45pm (or 1:45am), sometimes as 2:15pm (or 2:15am) - but never as 1:15pm/am "viertel [vor/nach] zwei" - quarter [to/after] two. the [] are optional.

you contradicted yourself by saying: * in one part of austria (vienna) means 1:15pm (or 1:15am) * but never as 1:15pm/am

in the other half it's never 1:15

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#77

Post by Max_Mustermann »

bapf wrote: post #22

Depending on where in germany you are, this is actually correct. The term "halb zwei" can mean 13h30 or 14h30 depending on which region in germany the speaker originates from.

Could you mention in what regions it could mean 2:30? Never heard of it and a quick search on google ergab nichts.

(edited)

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#78

Post by tom_mellior »

Max_Mustermann wrote: post #77
bapf wrote: post #22

Depending on where in germany you are, this is actually correct. The term "halb zwei" can mean 13h30 or 14h30 depending on which region in germany the speaker originates from.

Could you mention in what regions it could mean 2:30 ? Never heard of it and a quick search on google ergab nichts. (edited)

[no longer relevant, parent was corrected]

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#79

Post by Max_Mustermann »

tom_mellior wrote: post #78
Max_Mustermann wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you mention in what regions it could mean 2:30 ? Never heard of it and a quick search on google ergab nichts. (edited)

[no longer relevant, parent was corrected]

Yep, thanks, just corrected it.

Re: Google translates German “halb zwei” to French “deux heures et demie”: 1h off

#80

Post by pjmlp »

asveikau wrote: post #75
pjmlp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are quite a few, if you include the variants spoken across the peninsula, Galician, Mirandese and Aragon are even closer to Portuguese than Spanish. :)

Yep, I was aware of some of those, not trying to defame the good people of Galicia or anything, just trying to say that Iberian Romance languages are all pretty similar, and notwithstanding many exceptions the probability of easily finding nearly 1-to-1 translations of any given text is much higher than for English where you would inevitably lose more information in transit.

I got the point, was just trying to be a bit funny.

I imagine there are other languages around the world that share the same kind of similarities among themselves.

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