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Translation devices

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Kunkenfudge

Can anybody recommend a good device for translating from English to Vietnamese and Vietnamese to English?  I've used Google Translate but sometimes the translations from Vietnamese to English don't seem to make sense.  Makes me wonder how good it is for translating English to Vietnamese as well.  Can anybody recommend an accurate translation device?

Thanks!

Ciambella

Do you want to have a translator for official paperwork, serious business, or occasional miscellaneous need?

Kunkenfudge

Just everyday casual conversation.

macintyre

google translate is actually dangerous to use for Vietnamese

it almost always makes the most serious mistakes even with simple sentences and even with few words, eg translated 'is it close?' to 'is it closed?'

more fundamentally, and seriously (for meaning), it generally/often changes personal pronouns to the opposite, ie, i/me/mine > you/yours AND vice versa.

can you imagine just how much THAT changes the meaning???

it also regularly just deletes text it decides it doesn't need

i often wonder how many possible relationships it has ruined because of its serious and glaring and gratuitous errors

so when using, always use its Reverse Translate function to check what the translation actually says. you will be shocked.

but even using that more than once is fraught with additional errors as it will then change text that was previously ok to something quite different if you are not looking.

when looking at separate dedicated devices you need to make sure that it can accurately translate Vietnamese. just because it can do Spanish, French, etc, ok, is  nothing like proof. they are so completely different.

after a lot of research and reading the details, the BIRGUS is the one that i think would be best. BUT i say this not having actually used it. i couldn't afford the $300-$400 at the time, or now.

Kunkenfudge

Thanks for the BIRGUS tip  I found it on Amazon.  It has great reviews, and it is considerably cheaper now.  I wish I could find something that states that Vietnamese is one of its seventy languages.  You would think they would simply list all the languages in the product details, but not so.

macintyre

Vietnamese is

Kunkenfudge

Thanks.  I was pretty sure it was.

Ciambella

Deleted.  Wrong thread.

Kunkenfudge

well shucks

GuestPoster167

You could try the following:

1. Use Google Translate but write the phrase as simple and short as possible.
2. Use a Vietnamese <> English dictionary app for individual words.
3. Use a phrasebook with pre-written phrases.
4. Hire an interpreter to escort you. Sometimes students will interpret for free to get the chance to speak English with a foreigner.
5. Learn Vietnamese :-)

If we don't know a language, our communication in that language will be super limited. Not really an easy way around it, I guess.

Contem talk

Kunkenfudge wrote:

Thanks for the BIRGUS tip  I found it on Amazon.  It has great reviews, and it is considerably cheaper now.  I wish I could find something that states that Vietnamese is one of its seventy languages.  You would think they would simply list all the languages in the product details, but not so.


You can use any machine to translate, but the device never can produce the translation as we want. It was a program. They can bring words to words, But you cannot get an accurate translation paragraph or sentence with a sentence.

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