Some creative people have entered text into Google Translate, taken the spoken output (you know, what you hear when you press the speaker icon), and turned it into a catchy song. It quickly went viral in Taiwan, and as of this writing, has close to 600k views. I first heard about it in the official Google Translate blog, in this post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-translate-remix.html
The piano part is played by Wiwi Kuan (官大為). Enjoy!
First off, I’d love to thank the large number of users and supporters that have recently joined Wikitranslation. I’m aware that I haven’t been providing many updates or shown much activity and that Edward has provided for much of the website’s content, but I’m still here.
After viewing activity for some time and reading translations, I have not recently found a certain translation. I would ask for a translation through the website, but this text is an exception. It is a widely known, highly regarded, work of musical poetry. In some cultures it is regard...
North Korea, known as the Hermit Kingdom, is a tough country to get into. So naturally, my curiosity was piqued when I read people describing what North Korea was like firsthand. Marco Frissen writes:
The people are friendly, but in Pyongyang I always had the feeling they were instructed. We were able to talk with quite a few people, and they upheld quite an interesting opinion on 9/11 which was just two months earlier.. it’s fair to say they are almost brainwashed by all the censored news they get to see.
Marc van der Chijs adds:
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There are 6,909 known living languages in the world according to Ethnologue. As you might imagine, this makes communicating with foreigners pretty hard. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there was ...
I found this cool video which explains and provides an overview of translation, using machine translation to do so. Here is a more detailed explanation, written by the video producers:
A short piece that I put together with Scott Scharf and Scott Jaegar for Jay Yim’s “content” class at Northwestern. The text comes from the wikipedia definition of translation. This text is spoken by the AT&T speech synthesizer and then “translated” by some of the electronic translators available on the web. Translation was originally presented in quadraphonic surround sound...
As a result of the fragmentation and splitting of the human race, every culture has an unique experience that nobody can understand unless they are part of that culture. This is why there are words in other languages that take a full sentence in English to convey the same meaning. Here are 11 of the hardest words to translate:
A look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin. This word is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as most s...
If you think translating text is hard, imagine the extra work that comes with translating poems, songs, and musicals! You not only have to present the original text accurately, but now you have to keep the rhythm and rhyme scheme! I can’t imagine how one would even go about doing this, but luckily, Baptiste Deval explains step by step on Quora. The original can be found here: http://www.quora.com/When-a-musical-is-translated-how-do-th...
Learning a new language is one of the hardest yet most satisfying challenges one can take. Technology, globalization and transportation have revolutionized the way cultures interact and have impacted many aspects of our lives. In an effort to join the global community, to enrich cultural experience, and to stay marketable in an increasingly competitive economy, many people would like learn a new language. Before committing to the massive investment in time and money to do so, it is important to know which language will provide the most benefit to new speakers over the next few decades....
We’ve already talked about choosing between machine translation, wiki translation, and professional translation. If you decided you need professional translation, this guide is for y...
I was wasting time in the vast hinterland of the Internet when I came across this website: http://accent.gmu.edu/
It is a database of more than 1400 voices around the globe reading the same paragraph:
“Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things int...