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.