Have been using AltaVista's Babel Fish translation for Eng.to Fr.
But my French friend tells me that it does a poor job of conveying accurately the English language.
Has anyone dicovered a better site that translates the sentence structure into understandable and readable text? Thanks

Corky:

There is no free translation software that comes even close to decent translation unless you are just looking for individual words or simple phrases. Even the expensive purchasable translation software packages are no match for the human brain.

The best way to test a site would be to type in something in a foreign language that is grammatically correct etc and translate to english.

The best translations come from translators themselves or memory translation tools that they use and build up after each translation and create themselves. Its something you can't really buy.

<i>The best way to test a site would be to type in something in a foreign language that is grammatically correct etc and translate to english.</i>

Does anyone remember the episode of News Radio (tv show) when the billionaire station owner publishes his autobiography in Japan, then has it machine translated into English for the U.S. printing?

Fall-on-the-floor funny, it was. The book title itself went from &quot;Corporate Lion Tamer&quot; to &quot;Macho Business Donkey Wrestler.&quot;

I was going to suggest the Google translation tool as I use it, but upon viewing it for comparison, I think it is Babelfish as they were identical.

I think these are okay for writing very simple sentences for hotel reservations, etc. The problem is a lot of people make complicated sentences in their original language, or idiomatic constructions, or even incorrect grammar, etc, and they tend to get translated much less well.

I wouldn't use these for anything more important, but if I had something I had to translate from a foreign language, I'd give it a try.

In most cases, even though the translations are incorrect, you can tell what the intent might have been if you know language fairly well. Prepositions are often incorrect, for example, according to their usage, but you can sort of figure out what it was supposed to be.

I think it's too complicated for them to improve these tools, although it would be possible. Some is longer context, but within just a sentence or two, I can find errors that seem fairly obvious given the phrasing and I think it wouldn't be that hard to consider that.

Mr go, I remember that, and it was very funny. I miss that show.

Christina is correct. Babelfish works well if you construct VERY simple sentences in English. I used it to make B&amp;B reservations all over France and Italy with no problems. When I used it to translate the French/Italian replies into English, I agree the wording was a bit strange, but we were able to get the message and make our plans. Haven't found anything better.

Maybe the owners of the GAF website used translation software to describe a desirable 4-star property:

&quot;The dream for all travelers in CAMARGUE : your room is an n individual herdsman?s shed located in the middle of a swamp.&quot;

I didn't make that one up. Go to www.gaf.tm.fr/en/france/hotel.php and use the search engine to find the Hotel Pont des Bannes.