Non-English Libloggers: If you happen to read this blog…

I can’t imagine why you would, but if you do, your English is clearly infinitely better than my other human languages. (Try as I might, and I’ve tried, I’m hopelessly monolingual, even though I’ve learned and written in quite a few different computer languages.)

I have kindly volunteers for most of the languages involved here (I’m not sure about Danish or Dutch). But if you happen to be the proprietor of one of these blogs, or know that person, or otherwise recognize some of the phrases below…well, I can use more than one opinion.

I could use responses within the next week; I’ve done the raw investigation (boy, have I done the raw investigation) and plan to write the article reasonably soon. Help will be credited…either add a comment or send me email at waltcrawford@gmail.com. Please be sure to link your translation to the original.

Here’s the list, including blog names, taglines/mottos, one or two post titles, and sometimes post categories:

French

affordance.info

Ce weblog traite de sujets ayant trait aux sciences de l’information.

GoogleZon : scénario du possible.

La guerre du stockage en ligne

CultureLibre.ca

Carnet à propos du droit d’auteur, d’Internet etdes bibliothèques par Olivier Charbonneau.

Droit d’auteur et déficiences visuelles.

Bandes dessinées à propos du droit d’auteur.

Marlène’s corner–well, she volunteered, so I’ll rely on her translation!

Vagabondages

Errances et flâneries au fil de mes représentations : un blog sur le monde de l’information et des bibliothèques.

Une autre histoire de bibliothèques..

Le jargon bibliothéconomique.

Zaphir et lest technologies de l’information

Blog sur les systèmes d’information documentaires, les nouveautés informatiques et d’autres curiosités.

Repositories.

Pause forcée!

German

Archivalia

Digitale Urkundenbilder.

Library Mistress’s Place

Für das eher derbe wienerische ‘schleich di’…”

medinfo weblog

Informationen aus Medizin, Bibliothek und Fachpresse.

Berufsprestige von Ärzten und Bibliothekaren.

Bibliotheken, Publikationswesen.

Text & Blog

Das Weblog von Markus Trapp.

CSS Tutorial in 10 Schritten.

artikel, literatur.

Swedish Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish [as noted by bloggers who speak the languages]

Bibliotekarens bibliotek

BÃ¥nn er lenger unna enn jeg trodde.

bibliotekarie

Bibliotekarie fokuserar på det man pysslar med på bibliotek, om det nu är informationssöknig, kommunikation eller omvärldsbevakning. För folk på bibliotek och andra. Biblioteket är där du är!

Dags att lägga av.

Biblioteksinköp

Den här bloggen var ursprungligen till för att beskriva och diskutera hur man kan arbeta med inköp på ett mindre folkbibliotek. Nu har innehållet breddats och bloggen handlar om allt som har anknytning till bibliotek.

Mattias Bolkéus Blom samlar på bibliotek

Föreläsare – jag?

Biblioteksrelaterat

en blogg där Malin och Åsa lagrar artiklar, notiser och företeelser om bibliotek i vid bemärkelse.

Vi har hört det förut och vi säger det igen.

Update: Nunnor vs. bibliotekarier.

Biblog – Bibliotek og IT

En pris til Biblog..

I disse kanontider….

bloggrik

Tips och trix om informationssökning, applikationer, social software, bloggar och andra roligheter.

Feltänkt?

En webblogg om bibliotekspedagogik.

Gymnasieelevers användning av Internet.

Informationskompetens och infärgning.

Helenes hengekøye

Spredte tanker om bibliotek, litteratur, teknologi og annet som opptar meg.

Nyttige sider om søkeverktøy.

4 år.

internetBrus.com

Svensk blogg om söktjänster och sökning på Internet.

Gary Price intervjuad i Library Journal och Ask.com prisad av Mossberg.

Bläddra på Nätet i kulturtidskrifter med tidningar.info.

Internetsöktjänster, Bloggar och bloggsökning.

Internetsøgning

Tips og nyheder for folk som bruger internettet meget til at finde information. Fx bibliotekarer, journalister, undervisere og studerende.

1-2 ugers pause.

Computerspil – også en del af internettet (del 4: Deltagerne og konklusion.

Teknikaliteter

En blogg från några teknikbibliotekarier på Stockholms stadsbibliotek.

Vind för vÃ¥g – vilka är framtidens energikällor?

Jästbok (inte “gästbok”!).

Danish

e-klumme

Alt det nyeste om biblioteker og teknologi i Danmark og Internationalt.

Er bibliotekarerne gode nok til at søge?

XML og Da Vinci.

Dutch

WoW! Wouter over het Web

Wow!ter. Blijf op de hoogte van de ontwikkelingen op het Web of over veranderingen in het informatielandschap van bibliotheek en mediatheek.

Leuk doorkijkje naar de methoden van het Zembla team.

Edubiblioblogosphere.

Spanish

Infogestores

Bibliotecología y gestión de información.

phpCollab: gestión de proyectos online.

That’s it. If you send me your translation (please, no hoaxes!) within the next few days–let’s say by Sunday, August 6–I’ll credit you in the article unless you’d rather be anonymous.

A question, for whatever opinions people have: Why do the web translation engines (Babelfish and the Intertrans software) do such an awful job on these phrases? I’m guessing that there are three factors: 1. Blogs tend to be informal; 2 (related). Blogs tend to be idiomatic (I’m assuming other languages can be just as idiomatic as English); 3. Liblogs tend to have lots of library and internet jargon. Am I right? Comments?

11 Responses to “Non-English Libloggers: If you happen to read this blog…”

  1. Hello Walt, Here the Dutch translation

    Wow!ter. Stay current with the developments on the Web or about changes withing the information landscape of libraries.

    Nice view on the methods of the Zembla team.

    Edubiblioblogosphere.
    (Educational libraries/School libraries blogosphere)

  2. Hokay, I’ll take a stab with my lousy French… people with better French than mine, please correct!

    Ce weblog traite de sujets ayant trait aux sciences de l’information.
    This weblog deals with subjects relating to information sciences.

    GoogleZon : scénario du possible.
    GoogleZon: possible scenarios

    La guerre du stockage en ligne
    The war of online storage

    Carnet à propos du droit d’auteur, d’Internet etdes bibliothèques par Olivier Charbonneau.
    Notebook about authors’ rights, the Internet, and libraries; by Olivier Charbonneau.

    Droit d’auteur et déficiences visuelles.
    Authors’ rights and sight disabilities.

    Bandes dessinées à propos du droit d’auteur.
    Comic strips (?) about authors’ rights.

    Errances et flâneries au fil de mes représentations : un blog sur le monde de l’information et des bibliothèques.
    Walks and wanderings for my own personal entertainment (?): a blog on the world of information and libraries.

    Une autre histoire de bibliothèques.
    Another history of libraries.

    Le jargon bibliothéconomique.
    Library jargon.

    Blog sur les systèmes d’information documentaires, les nouveautés informatiques et d’autres curiosités.
    Blog on document information systems, novelties in informatics, and other curiosities.

    Repositories.
    Repositories. 🙂

    Pause forcée!
    Forced break!

  3. Ah, oops, how did I not see the Spanish ones?

    Infogestores
    Info-managers

    Bibliotecología y gestión de información.
    Library science and information management.

    phpCollab: gestión de proyectos online.
    phpCollab: online project management.

  4. walt says:

    Thanks, both of you. (I now have three translations for the Chilean blog in Spanish, which is probably enough.)

  5. oliver says:

    Informations from medicine, library, and specialist publications.

    The way librarians and libraries sees themselves (It’s a fairly minor aspect of what I’m blogging)

    Libraries, Publishing

  6. Two of the “Swedish” blogs are actually norwegian:-)

    Bibliotekarens bibliotek – The librarians library – Real tagline – Tanker og funderinger rundt det meste, men kanskje spesielt om Bibliotek 2.0 — Thoughts and musings about most things, but especially about Library 2.0.
    Correct URL: http://www.miromurr.no
    Old URL http://www.miromurr.no/bibliotek is no longer correct.

    Helenes hengekøye – Helen´s hammock –
    Spredte tanker om bibliotek, litteratur, teknologi og annet som opptar meg. – Thoughts about libraries, literature, technology and other things that engages me.

  7. Sorry, missed the words you wanted translated from the blog: Bibliotekarens bibliotek – The librarians library
    – the bottom is further away than I thought.

  8. walt says:

    Thomas, Thanks! Esben Fjord noted the same thing (and provided translations for the Danish blogs). Now, once I get translations for the Swedish blogs that actually are Swedish, I think I’ll be all set!

  9. Fiona says:

    Everyone else did a nice job on the translations so as for your question about why systran is so bad – all three of your guesses are good ones. In casual conversation, eg usenet, a lot of people also get sloppy about accents, which is sometimes fine if you are reading, but it wreaks havoc with a translation engine.

    In general, software does a pretty poor job of translating even well-written works like parts of a book or newspaper articles. Language is too nuanced for a machine to interpret correctly. It’s ok for short phrases or where you need to get the idea of what an article is about. Then again, that’s just as well, when I was studying Italian at university, it would have been tempting to use Babelfish now and then 😉

  10. Edwin says:

    Hi Walt,

    The Dutch Translation of Ronald is correct.
    I agree with Fiona. I use the translation tools often though, for reference work. Complete sentences are very poor, but when u translate a whole text u can often understand what it tries to tell you.

    A few weeks ago I received a reference question about a very rare italian cheese. The patrons had been searching for months. I started googling, but not in dutch or english, but in French (google.fr) and italian (it). My French is good but I don’t speak italian. After a while i stumbled upon an Italian restaurant-site (small place in mountains) which had much info on food in italian. With babelfish I found some new keywords which led me to the answer. What a joy that was: for me and the patron.

    Human language has many twists. I always wonder how good the tools will get eventually.

    Greetings

    Edwin
    http://zbdigitaal.blogspot.com , Zeeuwse Bibliotheek

  11. walt says:

    Thanks, Fiona and Ronald Edwin. Between your comments and the clear evidence of some from-the-source translations I received, I\’m leaving my three speculations in the article.

    As you note, translating a whole article is likely to give at least some idea of what the article is about. Formal articles will also tend to follow various rules more strictly, which probably also helps.

    I suspect my task–taking the tagline for a blog and one or two post titles–is particularly difficult. Fortunately, I won\’t actually be using any machine translations at all. I\’ll either have human translations or I\’ll leave the text untranslated.