http://www.gizmodo.jp/

gadget and tech type blog

mezbup wrote:

Womacks23 wrote:

http://www.gizmodo.jp/

gadget and tech type blog

Thanks that's a good one

A lot of the articles are direct translations of the American version so you can check and compare your comprehension if you want.

Womacks23 wrote:

mezbup wrote:

Womacks23 wrote:

http://www.gizmodo.jp/

gadget and tech type blog

Thanks that's a good one

A lot of the articles are direct translations of the American version so you can check and compare your comprehension if you want.

Which also means there might be a lot of unnatural translationese in the articles. Beware, I would not recommend mining sentences from it if you care about such things.

Tobberoth wrote:

Womacks23 wrote:

mezbup wrote:

Thanks that's a good one

A lot of the articles are direct translations of the American version so you can check and compare your comprehension if you want.

Which also means there might be a lot of unnatural translationese in the articles. Beware, I would not recommend mining sentences from it if you care about such things.

I quit my job in the sentence mines a couple of months back and I'm now working in a data-field as a vocab harvester.

Tobberoth wrote:

Womacks23 wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

Which also means there might be a lot of unnatural translationese in the articles. Beware, I would not recommend mining sentences from it if you care about such things.

They're translated by translators not machines.

Ever tried translating? Yeah, it's very hard.

I bet their staff get it down just fine.

Womacks23 wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

Womacks23 wrote:

They're translated by translators not machines.

Ever tried translating? Yeah, it's very hard.

I bet their staff get it down just fine.

I'm sure they do not, but your loss. When even professional translations of books are pointed out to be unnatural (since Japanese people prefer it that way), I really doubt a few guys at gizmondo.jp can do natural translations.

Womacks23 wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

Womacks23 wrote:

I bet their staff get it down just fine.

I'm sure they do not, but your loss. When even professional translations of books are pointed out to be unnatural (since Japanese people prefer it that way), I really doubt a few guys at gizmondo.jp can do natural translations.

What exactly are you saying? Are you implying that a native speaker of Japanese cannot take an English sentence and turn it into natural Japanese? Or that there is industry pressure to prevent said Japanese person from taking a bit of English and turning it into natural sounding Japanese?

Both. Japanese people prefer translated works to "feel" translated. Jarvik7 posted an article about it a while ago, unfortunately I didn't save the link. What that means is that translators often don't go for naturalness even if they could. They don't have to. magamo pointed out, for example, that Japanese passives are very often used in an unnatural sense in translations because English passive and Japanese passive are very different yet it's usually translated 1 to 1. Magamo pointed out that japanese passives generally need living things as subjects, the same isn't true in English. Therefore, the same isn't true in translationese either where Japanese passives has items as subjects very often.

Womacks23 wrote:

Can you highlight some examples of mistranslation?

You're not getting it, it's not mistranslation. They aren't doing it wrong, they are doing it differently. They are going for fidelity on the expense of naturalness, the same is true in many other languages. I already gave you the example of passives, I'm sure you can find many examples on the sites you visit just from that.

But it's not like it matters, if natives tell me they can spot translations compared to original natural Japanese, that's more than enough for me to stay away from mining sentences from it. Why use translated sources when you can use original sources anyway.