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>Okay, aside from all of the obvious problems with this scenario, how can I go about educating him on the short comings of >machine translation? Has anyone been down this road before?
Here's a quick and cheap example of the problems: Take a paragraph of your manual (or a page, or a chapter) and run it through an on-line translator like http://babelfish.altavista.com/.
Here is an example:
English: Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2003 is the personal information manager and communication program that gives you a unified place to manage e-mail, calendars, contacts, and other personal and team information. Key enhancements in Outlook 2003-such as Cached Exchange Mode, automatic grouping of messages, junk e-mail handling, and new reading views-improve the way you organize and manage information, and improve performance and server connectivity.
Spanish: La oficina Outlook® 2003 de Microsoft es el programa personal del encargado y de la comunicación de la información que le da un lugar unificado para manejar el E-mail, los calendarios, los contactos, y la otra información personal y del equipo. Los realces dominantes en la perspectiva 2003-such como modo depositado del intercambio, agrupar automático de mensajes, el E-mail de la chatarra que dirige, y la nueva lectura vista-mejoran la manera que usted organiza y manejan la información, y mejoran conectividad del funcionamiento y del servidor.
And back again:
The office Outlook® 2003 of Microsoft is the personal program of the one in charge and the communication of the information that a unified place gives him to handle the email, the calendars, the contacts, and the other personal information and of the equipment. The dominant enhancements in the perspective 2003-such like deposited way of the interchange, to group automatic of messages, the email of the scrap iron that directs, and the new reading Vista-improves the way that you organize and handle the information, and improves connectivity of the operation and the servant.
No translator works as well as a human being with native familiarity of both languages.
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