Language translator suggestions?

Zenith

Since my last German class was over a decade ago, I've been using Google Translate to translate my codebase. Sometimes the output isn't helpful. It doesn't always return a definition or context so I can see if the right word came back. Compound words seem like a problem more often than not.

For example, I have two variables, PerformanceCounter and SecurityCounter, that count the number of issues. Google translates them to Leistungsindikator and Sicherheitsschalter. Bing translates them to Leistungsindikator and Sicherheitszähler. If I break up the words, I'm not sure how it gets to the combined word, in this specific instance where the middle S comes from.

Another instance that's throwing me off is stuff like the word "server." I mean computer server. But what's coming back is a list of words that all have "server" as their definition. I can't tell if it's a computer server or a waitress.

Does anybody have any recommendations for alternatives for a second opinion? Or is this Engrish-like track I'm on actually helping make my code less decipherable?

Jaloopa

Machine translations are pretty shite on individual words without context.

You could try adding some context, "the server is down due to a DDOS attack" might well be enough of a sentence to make sure it gets the right word if you can pick it out from the resulting sentence.

Alternatively, find some German speakers on mechanical Turk

cvi

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

Google translates them to Leistungsindikator and Sicherheitsschalter.

At a guess, the Google translation considers "SecurityCounter" == "security desk", which would become "Sicherheitsschalter". To add to the confusion, "Schalter" could also mean switch (as in "light switch"). Bing gets it more right for you where "Zähler" is a thing that counts.

Or is this Engrish-like track I'm on actually helping make my code less decipherable?

You haven't really mentioned why you're translating in the first place. Without a specific reason, I would say "yes".

The people on the German side of things can, should they run into something they don't understand, plug the English word into Google Translate et al. just as easily as you, except that they will be able to deduce the correct German translation from context (assuming that there is one) because they understand the translated phrases.

If you translate it first, and end up picking something wrong or weird, the reader would have to -in the worst case- somehow backtrack to the original English name and retranslate it from there. Case in point: "Sicherheitsschalter" would indicate first a (binary) switch or toggle to me, and not a counter at all.

LaoC

@cvi said in Language translator suggestions?:

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

Or is this Engrish-like track I'm on actually helping make my code less decipherable?

You haven't really mentioned why you're translating in the first place. Without a specific reason, I would say "yes".

The people on the German side of things can, should they run into something they don't understand, plug the English word into Google Translate et al. just as easily as you, except that they will be able to deduce the correct German translation from context (assuming that there is one) because they understand the translated phrases.

+1
Semi-translated code is a horrible thing; some of the ickiest code I ever got my eyes dirty with was PHP written by Latin Americans with half-Spanish names all over the place. Either make it English or make it a single other language, but well-translated and by a native speaker if at all possible, otherwise you get incomprehensible hodgepodge. You're still lucky if you only have to deal with ambiguities like "counter" and not with some abbreviations accidentally forming words or totally untranslatable stuff like "translation lookaside buffer". It's a common IT term but as "lookaside" isn't a dictionary word, you won't find a German one for it. You can just call it a TLB, and every German programmer competent enough to understand the concept will know what it is—if the source is in English at least, otherwise they'd have to look for a potential German candidate word first. Or you can call it an ÜLP ("Übersetzungs-Lookaside-Puffer"), that's also happens to be the sound a German makes when she vomits in her mouth.

Gurth

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

If I break up the words, I'm not sure how it gets to the combined word, in this specific instance where the middle S comes from.

The middle s is there because it’s grammatically required. Leistungindikator isn’t a correct German word, even though Leistung and Indikator are. Put them together and you need to add the s to make a correct word, Leistungsindikator.

(My guess for the reason is ease of pronunciation, by the way. In Dutch the in-between-s is pretty much optional in most compound words, making it personal preference whether to use it or not, but with the s, the word tends to be easier to say.)

Zenith

@cvi said in Language translator suggestions?:

You haven't really mentioned why you're translating in the first place. Without a specific reason, I would say "yes".

I've decided to do this so that offshore resources can't use, steal, or otherwise profit from my work. A regular obfuscator leaves the exposed interfaces intact. It also has the side benefit of familiarizing me with a language other than English or Spanish.

iKnowItsLame

@LaoC @Zenith -> what they said

as native german speaker (Ibiza, rings a bell? ): don't, ever.
if you can|must translate the user-facing messages but leave the internals alone.

OTOH: if you truly want to be remembered as a BOFH translate from EN to DE to FR (or EN -> emoji)
/you will truly be loved

EDIT: whatever you do you're gonna end up with gems like this:

Source: , the forum we all need to survive

dkf

@LaoC said in Language translator suggestions?:

some of the ickiest code I ever got my eyes dirty with was PHP

incomprehensible hodgepodge

Could these be related?

ObjectMike

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

@cvi said in Language translator suggestions?:

You haven't really mentioned why you're translating in the first place. Without a specific reason, I would say "yes".

I've decided to do this so that offshore resources can't use, steal, or otherwise profit from my work. A regular obfuscator leaves the exposed interfaces intact. It also has the side benefit of familiarizing me with a language other than English or Spanish.

How does this prevent anything? It makes it more difficult, but not prevent. Unless you're relying on "it's not worth the trouble" type prevention.

cvi

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

I've decided to do this so that offshore resources can't use, steal, or otherwise profit from my work. A regular obfuscator leaves the exposed interfaces intact.

Not the reason I expected or would have guessed. :-)

If it had been because the work was for a German client, I'd suggested that you ask them and see what they think. The crowd here is probably a bit special, choosing to hang out on a English-speaking site, so I don't know how representative the opinions here are. (But I also would guess that developers in Germany probably know English relatively well.)

It also has the side benefit of familiarizing me with a language other than English or Spanish.

Fair enough. I think the one thing to be aware of is that you could end up using words in a way that native speakers wouldn't. I.e., while the translation word-by-word is correct, the terms wouldn't be used in the given context (like development or programming). Translation of technical jargon is difficult to get right; translation engines will struggle even more than for general everyday stuff.

iKnowItsLame

@cvi re "I think the one thing to be aware of is that you could end up using words in a way that native speakers wouldn't"

"I helped my uncle Jack off a horse" vs "I helped my uncle jack off a horse"

heterodox

@Zenith I've always used https://dict.leo.org/ when I've forgotten/don't know German words. It helps by searching verb phrases, idioms, community discussions, etc. to give you more context. For example, when I search server, the first result is "die Bedienung" (? I learned "der Kellner"), but it's marked (Amer.) which is a red flag. When you look down at verbs, it gives you "to shut down a server" => "einen Server herunterfahren" and when you look down at adjectives, it gives you "server-side" => "auf Serverseite", both of which strongly imply the correct word in this context is der Server.

As always, knowing the words isn't going to help you much if you don't know the grammar as well.

LaoC

@heterodox said in Language translator suggestions?:

As always, knowing the words isn't going to help you much if you don't know the grammar as well.

And that goes especially for leo.org. It's a fantastic resource for improving your writing in a language you know relatively well already but a beginner is more likely to produce horrible Engrish, Gelmen or whatever with it than with most other dictionaries.

Zecc

@iKnowItsLame said in Language translator suggestions?:

as native german speaker (Ibiza, rings a bell? )

No. Story time?

Zenith

@mikehurley It just makes it more difficult if you get past the runtime key exchange which should be slowed down by the obfuscator.

dfdub

@LaoC said in Language translator suggestions?:

Or you can call it an ÜLP ("Übersetzungs-Lookaside-Puffer")

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what DeepL translates it to: https://www.deepl.com/de/translator#en/de/translation lookaside buffer

dfdub

@Zecc said in Language translator suggestions?:

@iKnowItsLame said in Language translator suggestions?:

as native german speaker (Ibiza, rings a bell? )

No. Story time?

Austria's far-right Freedom Party ministers all resign amid scandal

It comes after their party leader was caught on tape offering contracts to an oligarch's niece.

Just a bit of borderline treason, no biggie.

LaoC

@dfdub said in Language translator suggestions?:

@LaoC said in Language translator suggestions?:

Or you can call it an ÜLP ("Übersetzungs-Lookaside-Puffer")

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what DeepL translates it to: https://www.deepl.com/de/translator#en/de/translation lookaside buffer

It's not entirely coincidental—I got the idea from looking at what Google Translate would make of it.

LaoC

@iKnowItsLame said in Language translator suggestions?:

as native german speaker (Ibiza, rings a bell? )

Austrian?

EDIT: whatever you do you're gonna end up with gems like this:

Source: , the forum we all need to survive

I'm starting to see a pattern here:

Gąska

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

If I break up the words, I'm not sure how it gets to the combined word, in this specific instance where the middle S comes from.

Genitive case. Something English doesn't have, so it might be hard to wrap your head around. "Performance counter" means "counter of performance", and "of performance" in German is "Leistungs". Hence "Leistungs-indikator", and in similar vein, "Sicherheits-schalter".

Note: it's not always going to be -s, and exact rules of case inflection vary from word to word.

LaoC

@Gąska said in Language translator suggestions?:

@Zenith said in Language translator suggestions?:

If I break up the words, I'm not sure how it gets to the combined word, in this specific instance where the middle S comes from.

Genitive case. Something English doesn't have, so it might be hard to wrap your head around. "Performance counter" means "counter of performance", and "of performance" in German is "Leistungs". Hence "Leistungs-indikator", and in similar vein, "Sicherheits-schalter".

It would be if "Leistung" were of a different declination class; actually the word doesn't change in the genitive. Sometimes the German compound word joiner used to be a genitive ending but sometimes it's also a plural ending or whatever else people found phonetically convenient.

dfdub

@Gąska
Good explanation, but unfortunately incorrect in this case. Words ending in -ung are always female and always remain unchanged in all four cases.

Gąska

@dfdub then I have no fucking clue where that s came from. I should've put a disclaimer that I also had my German classes over a decade ago.

dfdub

@Gąska Don't worry, if you asked a German person, they probably wouldn't know, either. The rules for forming compound nouns in German are weird. If I had to guess, I'd say that there's a general rule that has to do with the suffix as well, since Leitungswasser (Leitung + Wasser) ist formed the same way, but I honestly have no clue if that's correct.

Zecc

@dfdub said in Language translator suggestions?:

ist formed

:)

dfdub

@Zecc
I'd blame the Android keyboard, but you really cannot blame it for autocorrecting to German immediately after I actually used a German word. It'd literally have to read my mind for that.

HardwareGeek

@dfdub said in Language translator suggestions?:

Leitungswasser

Ooh! My German is pretty limited, but I know that word. A waiter in Leipzig once refused to serve us Leitungswasser, saying it was against the rules. It was unclear whether it was against health regulations — it was only a couple of years after Wiedervereinigung, and the water quality might not have been up to western safety standards — or it was against the restaurant's rules, because they wanted us to pay for bottled water.

LaoC

@dfdub said in Language translator suggestions?:

@Gąska Don't worry, if you asked a German person, they probably wouldn't know, either. The rules for forming compound nouns in German are weird. If I had to guess, I'd say that there's a general rule that has to do with the suffix as well, since Leitungswasser (Leitung + Wasser) ist formed the same way, but I honestly have no clue if that's correct.

As far as I know there isn't any complete set of rules. "Anruf" (phone call) has an s in the genitive but "Anrufbeantworter" (answering machine) doesn't stick one between the compounds. Some words like "Hauptseminararbeit" or "Hauptseminarsarbeit" (graduate level course paper) are even considered correct with and without the s, and some vary regionally, like "pig roast" - "Schweinsbraten" in Bavaria, "Schweinebraten" everywhere else.
German
Of course everybody has their intuition that will immediately identify you as a foreigner if you get it wrong. "Foreigner" may include Bavarians though.