franco
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Post by franco on Oct 30, 2022 14:02:23 GMT -8
I often use Google Translate and find it just amazing how I can have a page of text in Russian and in a second or two Google will translate that into English. However for some reason Google insists in translating proper names in particular place names and getting it completely wrong. here is an example : 
Shame of Stupidity is meant to be the translation of Fomarco Di Pieve Vergonte. It's a place name that does not mean anything at all in Italian but the Google translation could somehow give the wrong impression. BTW, if you ever translate text from French to English from a hiking forum you will end up with sardines. That is the translation for the French word for stakes (pegs). |
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BigLoad
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Post by BigLoad on Oct 30, 2022 17:36:50 GMT -8
Yeah, I agree Google Translate is bad at recognizing words as place names that don't require translation. I don't speak Italian at all, so Pieve doesn't ring a bell for me. "Vergonte" is close enough to "Verguenza" that I can sort of understand where "shame" came from.
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franco
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Post by franco on Oct 30, 2022 18:52:48 GMT -8
I had a look at that name.
Pieve is an old term for parish, Vergonte is derived from the previous name Vergunto and that is latin for something like "looking forward" .
Not that many Italians would know that....
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Travis
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WYOMING NATIVE
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Post by Travis on Oct 30, 2022 18:59:35 GMT -8
I often use Google Translate and find it just amazing how I can have a page of text in Russian and in a second or two Google will translate that into English. It isn't just place names. I studied Russian for two years, and though I've never been fluent in the language, I can often pick my way though it when written down. Google makes plenty of mistakes in trying to render a paragraph into English. It's neither just Google nor only Russian. I have purchased a fair number of things where the original instructions were clearly not written in English. The instructions I am left with, rendered into English by a digital translator, had enough errors to make clear that the translations are far from perfect.
The translators can definitely help, and sometimes help a lot. However, often the context of the text exposes errors in the auto-translator's word choice. |
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BigLoad
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Post by BigLoad on Oct 30, 2022 19:33:56 GMT -8
On a related note, I enjoy comparing movie subtitles with my own translation of what is actually said. It seems so often to be more paraphrase than actual translation. Sometimes that makes sense, because reducing text is visually and cognitively necessary. However, I'm perplexed when an English word or phrase that would be an exact match is replaced by something else of equal length.
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ErnieW
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Post by ErnieW on Oct 30, 2022 19:34:03 GMT -8
I don't if any of you have seen the text to image AI programs like Stable Diffusion or DALL-E. You give them a description and it generates a unique picture. They sometimes interpret what you input strangely.
This is from Stable Diffusion Online with the phrase "a logo for a backpacking club in photorealistic style": 
or "two backpackers watching a sunset"
"backpackers traversing a surreal fantasy world" (doesn't get these very right)
The above images are fabricated completely by the program.
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balzaccom
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Post by balzaccom on Oct 31, 2022 6:06:00 GMT -8
You should feed in the screen names of our members and see what you get!
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ErnieW
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Post by ErnieW on Oct 31, 2022 8:52:03 GMT -8
You should feed in the screen names of our members and see what you get! This is with the seed "balzaccom wrote a crime drama called Danger: Falling Rocks"
I think you have to give them a description of the scene/pic you want. This isn't anywhere real but is AI generated by the seed "A view from the top of the Grand Canyon at sunrise in photographic style"
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franco
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Post by franco on Oct 31, 2022 14:12:00 GMT -8
Yeah, I agree Google Translate is bad at recognizing words as place names that don't require translation. I don't speak Italian at all, so Pieve doesn't ring a bell for me. "Vergonte" is close enough to "Verguenza" that I can sort of understand where "shame" came from. That village is about 10 km (by air) from the Swiss border. Funny thing is that after the Roman Empire (when the first name came about) it passed eventualy to the Duchy of Milan, then it came uneder control of Spain, later the Austrian and then the Savoy family that eventualy created what is now Italy. So Spain did have an influence in that area , sometime in the 16th Century. More or less the same in my home town a bit further North. Because of the Alps, the Swiss border in that area has been the same since the 13th century but Italy was only formed in 1861. |
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