TRANSLATION CHAINS
The picture on the left is a real screenshot taken while writing this very course! How lucky can one get? It comes from the online photo editor PIXLR. Any idea what goes wrong here? Why do we get to see "dierenarts" (i.e. veterinarian) in the tooltip text when hovering over the B style?
ANSWER:
It looks like there is a code bug that forces the translated word to be translated again. The style "B" stands for BOLD which is VET (vetjes, vetgedrukt) in Dutch. That Dutch word is translated again as if it were an English word, so VET becomes DIERENARTS.
- The question arises whether we could come up with more of such "translation chains"? Could there even be cases with more than just one iteration? Would there be a word in English that passes this algorithm:
word A (English) TRANSL TO word B (Dutch|English)
word B (English|Dutch) TRANSL TO word C (Dutch|English)
word C (English|Dutch) TRANSL TO word D (Dutch)
I spent a bit of time on the question and it turned out there are plenty. Some examples are included below. Can you fill the empty cells?
- These translation chains COULD BE A NICE CHALLENGE FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS IN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY. For instance, use more than two languages, start from any of these x languages and let the ML key come from any of these x languages... What is the longest chain you could obtain - LET ME KNOW AND I WILL MENTION YOU!
- The chains above got me fascinated and resulted in a new language puzzle I call WordSkipper. Read all about it on my web page WordSkipper.
| SOURCE LANGUAGE | MULTILINK | TARGET LANGUAGE |
|---|---|---|
| AFRAID | BANG | KNAL |
| BEAR | BEER | BIER |
| BOAT | BOOT | LAARS |
| CLEVER | SLIM | DUN |
| CLOTH | ? | RONDE |
| CREAM | ? | ? |
| DEGREE | ? | BELDE |
| DISASTER | ? | OPRIT |
| EACH | ? | ELANDEN |
| FAT | ? | ? |
Now that you got the knack of it, let's add one more level!
| SOURCE LANGUAGE | MULTILINK | MULTILINK | TARGET LANGUAGE |
|---|---|---|---|
| FLYER | FOLDER | MAP | KAART |
| WHETHER | ? | ? | ? |
| TENDRIL | ? | ? | BELDE |
GOT THEM ALL? IF NOT, SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE SOLUTION.
BTW - THIS COULD BE A NICE CHALLENGE FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS IN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY.
For instance, use more than two languages, start from any of these x languages and let the ML key come from any of these x languages... What is the longest chain you could obtain - LET ME KNOW AND I WILL MENTION YOU!
S O L U T I O N S
| CLOTH | LAP | RONDE |
| CREAM | ROOM | KAMER |
| DEGREE | RANG | BELDE |
| DISASTER | RAMP | OPRIT |
| EACH | ELK | ELANDEN |
| FAT | VET | DIERENARTS |
| WHETHER | OF | VAN | BUSJE |
| TENDRIL | RANK | RANG | BELDE |