Online translators have been around for a very long time and it is only recently that they have been accurate enough to be considered worthwhile and useful. Of course like anything on the internet there are free translators and pay translators and the ones you have to pay for are usually more accurate than the free ones, but it is still fun testing the various translators to see how they work and how accurate they really are.
For some languages, whether employing hosted exchange or not, an online translator can be almost useless but for others it can be a great help to getting your message across to people that do not speak your native tongue. There are a couple of tests you can try that will not only help you see the effectiveness of an online translator but also help you understand the complexity of various languages.
Try this little interesting game with any of the free online translators available. Put the word “hello” in and translate that from English to Japanese. Then cut and paste the results back into the translation window and translate that from Japanese to English. The chances are that if you have a less than worthwhile translator you will wind up with a word different than “hello.” But there are many reasons for this. Japanese uses symbols sometimes not easily recognized by the software and going back and forth between English and Japanese on a free translator will more than likely get you different results every time. The same can happen when you translate to and from Arabic. It takes powerful translating software to even come close to getting it right and many of the free translators do not have that kind of power. If the software can make that much of a mess out of one word then imagine an entire sentence. Go ahead and try to translate a simple sentence back and forth from English to Japanese and see what kind of results you get.
One of the more recent uses for online translators has been by people looking to deceive others into thinking that a lucrative financial transaction awaits them usually in the Bank of Africa. These emails can sometimes be a testament to the power of translating software, as the more accurate the English spelling and grammar the more powerful the software was used to translate. In some cases you cannot even tell that a language other than English was used to initially create these documents. A combination of a good online translator and the grammar check in Microsoft Word can make for a convincing bit of spam email.
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