Omniglot - the blog

A hand-held device called a Phraselator, that can translate between English and a variety of other languages, has been adapted by a Cherokee business man, Don Thornton, to help with the preservation and revival of Native American languages, according to an article I found today.

You can talk into the Phraselator in English, it recognises your voice, translates your words and then reads the translation aloud. It was originally developed for military use in Afghanistan to translate from English into Dari, Pashto. Quite a few more languages have been added since then and the device is now used by used by the military, police and in disaster relief.

When he read about the Phraselator in 2001, Don Thornton thought that it could be used to help to save indigenous languages. After a long campaign for the right to use the technology, he set up a company, Thornton Media Inc. to do just that, and now works with over 70 tribes. The device is being used by and with elders to record words, phrases, stories and songs in their native languages, along with English translations, and then other members of the tribes are able to use it to learn their languages.

The device enables people to preserve and revive their own languages in their own ways without relying on others. For this reason, because it emulates oral traditions, and because of it’s ease of use, it has be adopted with enthusiasm by many. Thornton acknowledges that it would be better if the languages were passed on in the home from generation to generation, however this is not always possible. This device offers an alternative solution.

Today I discovered quite a good online translator that translates between a number of different languages from Arabic to Russian. I’ve been using it to get an English translation of the Arabic text I’m adding to a website to ensure that the text is going in the right places. This is necessary where the translation is inadequately labelled, or doesn’t follow the original English text.

When translating between Arabic and English, the results are often a bit strange, probably due to the very different structure of the two languages, but they give you the gist of the text. Here’s an example of a sentence in Arabic, with the English translation from the online translator, and the original English text:

كمجمع يجعل من أشد وأكفأ المنافعين لها منذ وقت طويل (The Green).

Online translation: The pool makes it more efficient Almenavaina time since fold l (The Green).

Original version: A campus to make many of its longer-established rivals turn green.

Here are Chinese and Russian translations of the same sentence with online translations into English.

這是一個令很多這所大學的長期競爭者眼紅的校園 [这是一个令很多这所大学的长期竞争者眼红的校园]
This is a campus which command very many this universities’ long-term competitors is jealous

является предметом зависти для многих более старых университетов-конкурентов
Is a subject of envy for many older universities-competitors

In English jealousy is associated with the colour green - the ‘rivals turn green’ with envy. The equivalent expression in Chinese is 令…眼紅 - ‘makes … (their) eyes red’. What colour is jealousy in other languages?

Another useful site I found today is an online spell checker for English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & Ukranian.

According to an article in The Boston Globe, there has been a significant increase in the sale of bilingual toys in the USA. These are toys the speak words and phrases and sing songs, and which are designed to help young children to learn languages. The most popular language combination is English and Spanish, which doesn’t come as much surprise given that there are nearly 48 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States. There are also toys that speak Chinese, Russian, Korean, Greek, Hebrew and various other languages.

A related article gives more details and mentions that toy manufacturers are bringing out bilingual phones, globes, dolls, books and laptops. A market niche toy companies didn’t expect was the parents of children adopted from other countries, who are keen on toys that speak the languages of their children as this helps ‘bridge the gap between the two countries’.

If kids get an early start with learning languages, and see it as something enjoyable, this bodes well for their future.

Do any of you know if there are any bilingual or multilingual computer games?

The Welsh Language Board / Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg recently added a text-to-speech facility to their website which reads out the text in either Welsh or English. They are using a system called ReadSpeaker, which can make your website talk in various languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, English (US and UK), French, German, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese and Welsh. The ReadSpeaker website itself has been translated into quite a few languages and has the text-to-speech facility for most of them.

Text-to-speech technology for English and other major European languages, and for a few Asian ones, has been around for years and works quite well. However I think Welsh version is quite new and could do with more work to improve the voice quality and intonation.

Here is an example of it reading the following text:

Iaith Geltaidd yw’r Gymraeg, sy’n perthyn yn agos at y Gernyweg a’r Llydaweg. Mae’r Gymraeg sy’n cael ei siarad heddiw yn ddatblygiad uniongyrchol i iaith y chweched ganrif.

Ychydig iawn o enghreifftiau ysgrifenedig o Gymraeg Cynnar sy’n bodoli heddiw, gyda’r cynharaf yn dyddio o ganol y nawfed ganrif. Gwelir nodweddion Hen Gymraeg yng ngwaith y Cynfeirdd, sy’n dyddio o ddiwedd y chweched ganrif, er fod y llawysgrifau’n llawer mwy diweddar.

Gwrandewch y fersiwn Gymraeg

Welsh is a Celtic language, closely related to Cornish and Breton. The Welsh we speak today is directly descended from the language of the sixth century.

Very few examples of Early Welsh exist today, with the earliest dating back to the middle of the ninth century. Elements of Old Welsh are seen in the work of the Cynfeirdd, originally dating back to the sixth century, although all manuscripts are much later than this date.

Listen to the English version

Source: http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk