Talk:English Portuguese and Spanish Localization Common Room

In the main page of English Portuguese and Spanish Localization Common Room how do I get a table of contents to appear please?

William Overington 1148 GMT 24 March 2006

The table of contents will automaticly appear when you have a couple more headdings.

Thank you. William

The Portuguese version of the poem is correct, though "primaveral" is really an adjective like in "céu primaveral" meaning "Spring sky". The noun would be "primavera". The translation back into English is where things went wrong. The phrase in Portuguese could either be interpreted as having a hidden subject (and so a "he", "she" or "it" is implied by the context) or having no subject (which doesn't exist in English, so "it" has to be inserted). I can't figure why it would prefer the first option. --Jecel 14:57, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Thank you for replying.

Am I right in thinking that you are meaning that, although correct Portuguese, a better translation of the line would be

É primavera.

rather than the

É primaveral.

line that the machine translation produced?

I suppose that in English that the word spring could be either noun or adjective as in "It is spring." and "It is a spring morning."

I will try

It is a spring morning.

in Translation Plus and observe the result. It translated as

É uma manhã primaveral.

and translated back as

It is a spring morning.

So now I will try

It is a morning in spring.

in Translation Plus and observe the result. It translated as

É uma manhã em primavera.

and translated back as

It is one morning in spring.

which, in English, is not quite the same meaning. English people do not typically use the word "one" instead of "a" in a sentence except where the meaning is "one particular" so that "It is a morning in spring." would just set the scene of a typical spring morning, whereas "It is one morning in spring." sets the scene that something else happens as if saying that it was just an ordinary morning in spring until something unusual happens, such as a hot air balloon landing in a nearby field, thus a morning in spring that local people will remember for years.

So translations producing both primavera and primaveral have been achieved. Also, the word manhã has been produced, which is interesting typographically as someone who knows no Portuguese can easily know that some text may well be in Portuguese if the text contains the ã character. Of all the languages on the planet I cannot be certain that no other language uses a ã character.

Thank you for your help.

William Overington 0832 GMT 25 March 2006

The "É primaveral" translation is simply wrong, though it can be correct Portuguese depending on the context (the previous sentence, essentially). "É uma manhã em primavera" is not even correct Portuguese - the translation should have been "É uma manhã de primavera" instead.

My proposal for the language problem in the OLPC project was not to attempt automatic translation but semi-automatic instead. See [1].

--Jecel 14:11, 26 March 2006 (EST)

Thank you for the additional information and the link. William

A spanish contributor...

Well, I add to this project to help on all I can do. I can offer certain technical infraestructure, i work on a Public University and with my knowledge.

Bueno, acabo de aterrizar en este proyecto y me gustaría ayudar en todo lo que pueda. Tengo cierta infraestructura técnica, trabajo en una universidad pública y aportando mi conocimiento.

--Asmarin 12:13, 7 April 2006 (EDT)