translation is frustrating

[Neil]

Type: sweetheart into MDBG and you will get the following result:

情人

情人

qíng​rén​

lover  / sweetheart

Perfect, right?  Wrong.  I asked my current lady to explain:
Neil5:27:44 PM
解释爱人和情人之间的差异。
Reply
Alice5:30:02 PM
爱人是老婆，情人是第三者

According to her, airen is wife, qingren is a third party.

Be careful gentlemen.

[Paul Todd]

Your right Neil it can be frustrating sometimes and double checking is not such a bad idea. I seem to remember the google translate sometimes mixed up the words love and hate which  can cause a little confusion to say the least!

[Irishman]

Neil , I believe you want qin ai de

[ttwjr32]

this is the fun and trying times to say the least when two entirely different cultures are making
a go of it. but it does add to the excitement of growing together

[shaun]

Yes google does switch between love and hate.  It is even a wonder that Peggy and I are still together with some of google's faux pas.  I overcame this by telling her to always assume I am saying something nice and google is doing it usual thing.  I we are concerned about what is being said then we say google not good tonight and I will ask here what I am saying to her.  If there are errors I clear them up and we move on.

I am sure many of you have experienced this but I have spent whole evenings trying to clear up a simple misunderstanding due to translation errors.  Flexibility is an absolute must in these kinds of relationships; even face to face.

[Jason B]

I am so confused, the website Neil posted has a different way of translating to google translate and then it is different again to the Mandarin phrase book that I have.  What is a poor guy supposed to believe.  I suppose I will just ask Wendy and go with her translation.  If it is good enough for her than it is good enough for me.  All  I want to do is say, Hello, I am so happy to be here.  When I see her on Friday. 

[shaun]

Jason I have fewer problems with mdbg than I had with google.  There isn't a perfect translation program.

[Bee964]

I tried about 3 weeks ago to call my fiance "sweetheart" during one of our chats on QQ...she didn't smile like I was hoping, but starting questioning me about what I was trying to say to her.  She then went on to tell me this was the word for "mistress" in China (married man's girlfriend), and that she did not like it (needless to say!).  I explained that it didn't mean that in the U.S., it was a good word for a man to call the (one and only) woman he loved...she then understood why I used it...but I don't anymore!!!

I found she really likes "honey" instead!      And she likes to call me "dear" (and that's qin ai de, like the others just mentioned).
Scott

Scott,

I got into the same situation with a woman I was chatting with and realised that it is much better to ask if there is a different pet name that I could use for her rather than just calling her "dear" all the time. She did give me a couple and "honey" was one of them too. One must not assume that our traditions will automatically work with their different culture.

Dave C

[RegnisTheGreat]

This so much reminds me of grad school. I spend 4 years on this in grad school trying to work on the holy grail of machine translation and natural languages. I'll explain later when I get home all the confusion you are having.

[shaun]

We wait with anticipation.

[ttwjr32]

Regnis,

figure it out and sell it to Microsoft or Google for BILLIONS

but give us all a pirate copy

[Pineau]

This is what I do and some of you probably do too.
I open a separate browser window with three separate tabs.
Then I open MDGB in one tab and yahoo Babel fish in the other two tabs. I set one Babel fish to translate English->Chinese and the other one to do the reverse.

I start with MDGB and type in my English and get the Chinese translation. Then I copy the Chinese and paste it back and translate back to English. If it makes sense then I use it. If not I try to reword it and repeat the process until I am happy with the result. If that fails I resort to babble fish and do the same. It's a lot of extra work but it saves her frustration trying to decipher what I wrote. I have done it so many times I am getting pretty fast at it. 

[Lain]

This is what I do and some of you probably do too.
I open a separate browser window with three separate tabs.
Then I open MDGB in one tab and yahoo Babel fish in the other two tabs. I set one Babel fish to translate English->Chinese and the other one to do the reverse.

I start with MDGB and type in my English and get the Chinese translation. Then I copy the Chinese and paste it back and translate back to English. If it makes sense then I use it. If not I try to reword it and repeat the process until I am happy with the result. If that fails I resort to babble fish and do the same. It's a lot of extra work but it saves her frustration trying to decipher what I wrote. I have done it so many times I am getting pretty fast at it.

Thats funny....exactly what I do, except I just use two tabs with MDGB so I can write and translate her words at the same time. I will honestly say that using QQ has almost ruined my relationship due to bad translations and massive misunderstandings. To further complicate matters my lady would occasionally drop in Cantonese words that do not translate with ANY website into its correct meanings. Once I copied and sent to my translator a phrase that she posted asking him to translate it for me....he said it was Cantonese, he did not know either.....after that discovery we have better communications, but now we only use QQ for very basic conversations with the understanding that there is going to be issues.

I really wish there was a way to link my Besta-7000 into QQ, as it has proven to be the most accurate translation tool I can find...other than a human translator.

[ttwjr32]

the translation issue is probably the single must frustrating thing in these relationships. i can feel for you
members who have this issue.

when i talk to Willy the translator really has a hard time translating his english into proper english lol!!!!!!

but seriously i can imagine the misunderstandings that happen with that

[Hans]

When I want to translate something I always doublecheck it if I have never used the word before. It's very easy to get it completely wrong. One  of the first handwritten letters in Chinese I sent to my lady I wrote on my laptop first to get all the strokes right. It turned out I missed on the character for "letter", 信，and wrote "chemical" instead. So I thinkaed her for her chemical... Glad I found out before I sent it.

We use both 亲爱的 and 宝贝。  Baobei means treasure, darling, baby. I like the sound of it too.