{"id":1690,"date":"2008-12-05T09:40:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T17:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2008\/12\/tip_of_the_tongue\/"},"modified":"2008-12-05T09:40:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T17:40:25","slug":"tip_of_the_tongue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2008\/12\/tip_of_the_tongue.html","title":{"rendered":"A tip of the tongue"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know what took me so long. It’s old news by now. But I’m still amazed. Here’s a text in English<\/a> about William Styron, chosen\u00a0at random<\/strike> from this blog. (Actually, someone else chose it.) Now here it is in Spanish<\/a>, in French<\/a>, in German<\/a> … OK, how about Chinese<\/a>?
\n<\/a><\/span>Gawd! Put in any text you like.<\/a> The translation takes no more than seconds. If the translated text is from a Web page, you can mouse over any particular sentence and have it highlighted in a pop-up box in the original language.
\nHow good are the translations? How should I know? I don’t read Chinese. But I do have some rusty French, some rudimentary Spanish, and a faint recognition of German — and they looked intelligible to me.
\nPostscript:<\/strong> Supervert<\/a> writes: “Google’s translation service is just one of the many reasons they approach being a technological equivalent<\/a> of the old-time conception of divinity. All-knowing and able to speak in tongues… Kicks the shit out of me too. And it all started with an algorithm cooked up by two dorky grad students in a dorm room.”
\nPPS:<\/strong> Bill Osborne<\/a> replies, “I always thought God was a bit dumb.” And adds, “Hier are sum dokumenten you can tast the Programm mit.<\/em>” He offers a comparison of the Googlematic German<\/a> and Italian<\/a> translations of this original text in English<\/a> with the idiomatic German<\/a> and Italian<\/a> translations. But he concedes that “even if full of errors and sometimes misleading,” the Google service “will be a boon for an extensive correspondence I have going with someone who only speaks Spanish.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know what took me so long. It’s old news by now. But I’m still amazed. Here’s a text in English about William Styron, chosen\u00a0at random from this blog. (Actually, someone else chose it.) Now here it is in Spanish, in French, in German … OK, how about Chinese? Gawd! Put in any text […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-rg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}