2022-02-04 02:24:20

Hi everyone,
This idea came to me while communicating with the developer of mml2vgm. The guy who develops it is Japanese, so I use a translator.

In the past I used Google, but recently I've started using DeepL. The questions I am going to pose in this thread are sort of a verbose version of which is better?

Sometimes for the fun of it, I'll translate something in DeepL, then Google to see how similar the translations are. At times they are quite similar, while at other times they are quite different.

Just today, I ran across two Japanese to English translations which were exceedingly different. While the message made sense in both, the grammar varried wildly. DeepL's grammar was natural but professional (which is how I normally write anyway), while Google wrote in understandable, but very broken English. It especially mixed up pronouns like I and we, which DeepL seems to have less trouble with. Put simply, reading that one example at least made me feel like DeepL had formally studied English, while Google was still learning. Admittedly, the differences between the two are often far less pronounced, but yeah sometimes big differences like that seem to come up. I can't help but feel a little alarmed when they come up on a piece of English text I've just typed.

So here's what I'm wondering:
Could these drastic differences between translation services tell me anything? Perhaps it is telling me that I am not writing clearly, or in a tone suitable for Japanese?

Is one translator better than the other for clearly getting a message across?

Is translating from English to Japanese, then back, any sort of indicator of how understandable the Japanese would be to a native speaker?

Of course I know I'm overthinking, and it's partially for fun. But I'm also seriously curious too, because I know I will probably never learn Japanese. Thus, translators are all I got, and I do want to avoid translation barriors wherever possible.

At this point, my money is on DeepL, because I find Google's translations at least a bit harder to decipher most of the time. But I also have to admit that sometimes it's a toss-up.

So what are your thoughts?

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2022-07-28 07:44:48

I hope this isn't too big of a time jump for lack of better words, but I think it's still relevant.
Yes, I agree. Deep L seems to be much better at translating than Google Translate. I'm not sure why, since Google Translate has been around for many years, and I believe Deep L is recent. I think it's because Deep L translates sentences while Google Translate tries to translate each word individually. Either way, I have barely any trouble interpreting what Deep L is telling me. Actually, it's so good at translating Japanese to English that I've been considering using it as a web translator for this forum in order to improve my reading and comprehension skills. Sure, it's AI so it's obviously not perfect, but it's a great start for someone like myself who's still a beginner, and it's certainly leaps and bounds better than Google Translate.

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2022-07-28 10:36:53

where can I find deep l?

2022-07-28 10:43:41

deepl.com or search Google for Deep L, which you should make a habit of doing.

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2022-07-28 18:32:03

That, and it also offers a formality toggle for languages that have different registers in the form of altering the words you use, so that's really cool you can specify this. I also like how it has alternative translations for queries, even for full-on phrases or sentenses. I've basically switched to it completely for my German studies.
+1 for DeepL!

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