>Mrs B is a qualified linguist, translator and interpreter ( I’m not too foul, either) and – over the years – we’ve invested quite a bit in translation management tools and kept up to speed on the free online services.

All of them can translate words and some of them – the good ones – can frequently translate simply structured text as well as a human translator. (But who writes simply structured text these days?)

Their big advantage is that they save keystrokes.

But there’s still a need for translators who can provide interpretive translations – read and understand the source text, understand which target group the customer wants to address and deliver words that transport the message in a way that’s understood.

“If they didn’t hear it, you didn’t say it”

So when Dubber over at New Music Strategies featured the Google Translation tool this week, I gave it the acid test.

Translate a text from English to something (German, in this case) and translate it back.

Do it to this rant and you get:

Why is it that rapid rain gets out, closed buyers into that droves?

Those is the only logical explanation for the fact that EACH PARTICULAR unfit slot was taken to all memory, I today visited.

That I do not need preferential parking. Already.

Or is it that usual putrid selfishly moving unfit parking – which I away best of times of pisses – connected through aquaphobic putrid strolls selfishly moving unfit parking strolls. Quite near the memory.

So it not bumsend to dissolve in the rain or which.?

Well, yes…
Back to the drawing board

But get your name on the list for Dubber’s e-book, ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online’.

It’s packed with perceptive comments and ideas on the way that the music industry’s going/gone and what you need to do to leverage it. Loads of commonsense stuff, too.

A job really well done.

(Even if he is dead wrong when it comes to re-intermediation and the economics of scarcity…)

And talking of linguistics – Dave Dobbyn has something to say on the matter:

Language [download] from Twist