К содержанию

Music

от LionsAreUs, 2 марта 2013 г.

Сообщений: 4

Язык: English

LionsAreUs (Показать профиль) 2 марта 2013 г., 17:33:25

Having copy/pasted several songs into Google's translator, I'm appalled at the uselessness of the translations.
"Liza Pentras Bildojn"
One ends up with totally unusable sentences, no cohesive themes, sometimes no sense at all.
----------------------
"Ja nur diru, ke vi amas" see it at YouTube.
AS a near beginner, this was readable immediately, but...
"just say that you love"!!!!!

Say that you love WHAT? Me? Fried eggs? Mustard? Its a good dance/disco tune, but aren't complete thoughts and sentences a real plus?
===========
Again, youtube: "Adiaŭ Birdeto Mia"

Putting these lyrics into Google translators yields totally disjointed and ridiculous results, totally useless. This is all very discouraging. I realize that if one clicks on words in the target language, they become yellow highlighted, as do the corresponding words in the original(Eo, in this case).
----------
I've tried splitting words with moderate success only, I've seen things like getting different (or no translations) from words with "Ĝ" vs 'G followed by an 'X'.
========================
I'm exceedingly discouraged. I worked VERY quickly thru the first 50 or so lessons in the first course Bildoj/Demadoj(I think) just to get the taste of it all.
--------------------
Eo-USA offered Richardson's "Esperanto: Using the International Language". This book has a yellow background with 2 hands shaking on the cover. I've only covered the first lesson. But it looks as tho any translations of music are useless. Is this from bad translators, or is it acceptable to slap anything together in Eo music. For a language w/flexible word order, ability to drop final vowels for poetic use, my experience IS NOT showing Eo in a very positive light.
--------------
What's going on? BTW: even if one isn't a good singer, or musically gifted, memorizing lyrics to a song in a language you;re learning is a GREAT way to learn/recall words and their proper usage. Being forced to memorize words to a set "rhythm" also aids in learning.
-----------------
Most native English speakers learned Twinkle, Twinkle, as kids. Not only was it easy to sing as a kid, it was practice in learning your own language as kids.
-----------------------------
This has been very discouraging, watching EO apparently "fail", and at the very type of task at which it should shine. The whole logic behind Eo appeared brilliant, to me. Now I'm wondering what's up with this.

Vespero_ (Показать профиль) 2 марта 2013 г., 19:31:56

Google Translate operates based on source material that it has in both both languages. According to their announcement, they have about 1/100th the amount of resources for Esperanto that they do for more popular languages. That they can translate at all is rather impressive.

Over time, it will likely grow more accurate.

Machine translation always struggles with agglutinating languages. Compound words and context are not a computer's friend. Translating English <-> German with Google Translate can end up with some pretty bad stuff.

I make a hobby of translating Esperanto lyrics into English, but I haven't used a bulk translator in a very long time. It's best to just read and look up any words you don't know.

erinja (Показать профиль) 3 марта 2013 г., 0:41:03

Songs are difficult to translate because they are essentially poems - they regularly use non-standard language and unusual word orders. That's true in ANY language, including English, including Esperanto. It's not easy to translate a song from one language to another, even by hand.

You might have an English song, for example, that says "Say you care". Care about WHAT?, the learner might ask. It's understood through context ("....care about me", most likely). Songs aren't normally so didactically literal. Similarly, an Esperanto song that says "Diru ke vi amas" has it understood, through context, that we likely mean "....amas min".

We wouldn't talk like that in normal speech. But songs aren't normal speech, and although songs are useful for learning vocabulary, you can't expect a rock song to be written intentionally with easy lyrics to help the beginners.

If you want songs with easier grammar, learn some Esperanto children's songs (the Esperanto equivalent of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, rather than the Esperanto equivalent of the Beatles).

Songs by Ĵomart kaj Nataŝa should be easier to understand. There are some children's songs on YouTube. You shouldn't blame the whole language because the entire language isn't geared towards beginners. Esperanto is easier than other languages - but poetry is poetry, and not all content is geared towards beginners. Some of it is aimed at fluent speakers (and you will no doubt also be able to get full enjoyment of that eventually, as well).

LionsAreUs (Показать профиль) 3 марта 2013 г., 1:05:17

Thanks to both of you who so far have weighed in. Things couldn't possibly be as awful as they appear.
I can see how German, with its love for compound word formation would trip up a translator, as does Eo with its agglutination tendencies.
--------------------
As for simpler songs, I'll follow the Ĵomart and Nataŝa lead, see where that goes---in a day or 2, after the frustration goes.
The whole thing seems crazy to me, but its unlikely that everyone is crazy on this site, there must be explanations, and I suspect I more-or-less have the explanation, or at least partially.

Наверх