Improving our similar translation results
Why show similar translations?
Sometimes similar translations are even more valuable than a ‘perfect match’ translation. Let’s say you search for the translation of ‘egg’. You might be looking for something similar but don’t know exactly what the word is – e.g. terms as ‘egg yolk’, ‘fried egg’ or ‘egg-shell’. Or you might need a particular expression where two or more words are used in combination, such as ‘to smile at sb.’ or ‘Keep smiling!’. This function helps you with a broader search to give you as many potential answers as possible.
How does it work?
We have built up a vast database with millions of sentences from multiple sources. This database helps us find results for almost any search term.
Why are some translations marked as ‘might not be accurate’?
In order to ensure a decent number of results for nearly any search term you need millions and millions of sentences. This can only be done by automatically matching sentences and their translations across multiple sources. Unfortunately, the quality of the sources varies and our matching algorithm is not perfect yet 
. So bear with us, we are constantly working on improving the quality of our search results. Translations marked with an exclamation mark have not been checked yet but you can help us to do so, just continue reading.
What can I do?
Lots! And it doesn’t even take a second! When you go over a sentence with a mouse, you will find a small symbol of a flag on the right side. If you think the translation is wrong or inappropriate, click on the flag. We will be automatically informed to review the sentence. The user feedback system helps us determine the accuracy of each translation and improve our matching algorithm. We really appreciate your help!
As always, do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions.
Andreas
Category: bab.la news | Tags: dictionary, improvement, translation 32 comments »
October 27th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
wrong translation: after entering “ervaren” NL->ENG
Dat zal ervaren Europeanen overigens niet verbazen.
This debate has been of a very high quality, very concise and very useful.
October 31st, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Thanks, Mustafa. We will correct this mistake.
November 20th, 2011 at 1:16 am
english-polish
i will be there = tam bede not bede tam
jutro tam bede=i will be there tomorrow
greetings monique
December 7th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
The french translation of “You reap what you sow.” is wrong.The right translation would be”Tu récolteS ce que tu sèmeS.
December 8th, 2011 at 11:40 am
I wouldn’t agree about ‘I will be there’ – it’s rather ‘będę tam’ , as emphasizing ‘there’
December 10th, 2011 at 7:16 am
All the examples of sentences with “Amazônia” use Portuguese from Portugal, not from Brazil. Considering that most of the people who’d possibly use this word in Portuguese would do so in a Brazilian context, the examples should be in Brazilian Portuguese.
Different syntax, orthography etc. “Amazônia” itself is a word written with “ô” (“closed” accent) in Brazil and “ó” (open accent) in Portugal…
December 17th, 2011 at 10:17 pm
There is also a sequel to this: now Mugabe is using hunger and misery as a weapon against his own people, and is feeding nationalism and blaming colonialism to conceal his own crimes.
The translatios english->portuguese is completely wrong.
It barely captures the meaning. The real translation could be:
Existe uma contrapartida (disto): agora Mugabe está usando a fome e a miséria como arma contra seu próprio povo; esta alimentando o nacionalismo e maldizendo o colonialismo para esconder seus próprios crimes.
December 21st, 2011 at 6:30 am
When I put in the word “bitch” the similar translation says ; C-2, dit is 68…, in English ; C-2, this is 68… what is ment by that ?? Thank you, my best regards, Robert
December 21st, 2011 at 7:29 am
which finger is the “lock down one”… as mentioned in the english sentence containg the word “lock” thanx
December 21st, 2011 at 7:58 am
I will be there – I think it all depends on the context. You may say ” tam bede” or “bede tam.” I think the difference is subjective — depends on personal feeling. Myself, I prefer “jutro tam bede”
January 1st, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Ich denke “jordskalv” sollte man eher mit Erdbeben übersetzen, für Erdrutsch würde ich “jordras” und für Gerölllawine/Erdlawine “jordskrev” verwenden.
Gruß Andy.
January 8th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
As a Dutch person, I was looking if there was a proper English phrase to wish for someone to enjoy their meal. Aside from coming up with “Bon apétit”, I spotted a phrase in the similar (related?) translations which was “Niet schijten war je eet”, translating to the (kind of vulgar) phrase “Don’t sh-t where you eat”. While the translation’s correct, there’s a typo in the Dutch phrase; the word “war” should be “waar” (meaning “where”).
Figured I’d share this. Cheers!
January 12th, 2012 at 11:15 am
@Robert: This is a hick-up of our system. Sorry for that.
January 12th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Hallo Andreas! Du hast Recht, allerdings würden wir eine kleine Änderung vorschlagen: Erdbeben ist jordskalv aber Erdrutsch ist jordskred. Ist im Wörterbuch geändert.
January 12th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Falsche Übersetzung. -> “Langärmeliges Oberteil: zum Schutz des Oberkörpers/der Arme” müsste heissen: “Górna cześć odzieży o długich rękawach dla ochrony górnej części ciała i ramion”, und NICHT wie es dort steht “Długie spodnie: dla ochrony dolnej części ciała i nóg.” Das Letztere würde heissen “lange Hose: zum Schutz des Unterkörpers und Beine”.
Grüße,
Cufuzy
January 16th, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Hallo Cufuzzy,
Vielen Dank für Deinen Kommentar! Wir haben den falschen Satz gelöscht.
Weiterhin viel Spaß bei bab.la!
Beste Grüße,
Asia
March 6th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
Translation PT – ENG
The scentence: Senão nada irá acontecer-lhe!
The Translation: Then nothing would ever happen to him.
—-
The translation should be: The nothing will ever happen to him.
or
The scentence should be: Senao nada iria acontecer-lhe!
March 10th, 2012 at 9:11 am
English->French
In case of activities performed recently such as “yesterday i ate…” or “last week i had..” passe recent should be used and not passe compose
March 16th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Firstly, Keep the sentences SIMPLE.
It gets to the point faster and in a clearer fashion. as here, translation is important, not complex tenses of verbs and clauses etc.. hence problems in other senctences translated by people for whom English is not their first language.
Some sentences were sentence fragments and so didn’t show proper English and therefore could not show a good translations or good examples for either language.
Another sendtence mentioned about Mr. Alhern at the European Summit, in English, but no mention of him was made at all in the Swedish translation, so I don’t know if the sentences were meant to be related or not.
Also, it seemed in one example that ‘day to day’ in English is not Monday to Saturday’ in Swedish. Surely ‘day-to-day ‘would be something like ‘dag (to) dag in Swedish which I do not know, which is not as specific as Monday to Saturday (where is Sunday?); so this is a rough and misleading translation unless that is all that can be done in Swedish, which I doubt.
March 21st, 2012 at 7:14 am
Einige Beispielsätze übersetzen „Medio Oriente“ mit „Mittlerer Osten“ statt mit „Naher Osten“.
March 21st, 2012 at 7:17 am
Einige Beispielsätze übersetzen “Medio Oriente” mit “Mittlerer Osten” statt mit “Naher Osten”.
April 3rd, 2012 at 1:53 pm
es ist nicht “j’en fait la demande” sondern “j’en faiS la demande” für “ich beantrage das”
April 16th, 2012 at 12:57 am
Hi,
“I will be there tomorrow.” – “Jutro tam będę.”
BUT
“I will be there” – “Będę tam.”
NOT:
“I will be there” – “Tam będę.”‘
It’s complicated to explain u guys, why the last form isn’t correct. We are using “Będę tam” more often then “Tam będę” that’s all.
Greetings from Poland!
April 16th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
And this is also what the sentences at http://en.bab.la/dictionary/polish-english/bede-tam seem to confirm.
I’d say that “Tam będę.” as a translation of “I will be there” is only acceptable if you really want to emphasize that you will be THERE and not anywhere else.
All the best,
Asia for the bab.la team
April 16th, 2012 at 4:42 pm
@Tom S. Fox: das kommt bestimmt davon, dass Mittlerer Osten ein geographisch nicht eindeutig festgelegter Begriff ist und deswegen auch bei Übersetzungen einige Probleme verursacht.
April 16th, 2012 at 4:51 pm
@Carlos Jorge Mata Cruz Filho: we deleted the wrong sentence (as of now we don’t have the possibility to modify them)
@kavita: we had our French expert look over the sample sentences at: http://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-french/last-week-i-had and he said they were correct
@Sue: thank you for your valuable feedback, we are constantly working on improving the displayed results
@magui: wir werden den Satz löschen, danke!
April 22nd, 2012 at 5:48 am
I really like the amount of sentences that I can use as reference in my English classes.However I would like to know if all English sentences are correct therefore from English sources or Its mixed and also can come from another languages sources then translated for English?
Thanks
April 22nd, 2012 at 3:10 pm
I just want to point out that the French below is not a translation of the English text:
Finally, Mr President, I thank you and your excellent staff for all the cooperation through the year, and wish you a Merry Christmas.
Il nous dresse un tableau relativement détaillé des critères à remplir et des progrès déjà réalisés.
Source: http://fr.bab.la/dictionnaire/anglais-francais/merry
April 26th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
You should allow visitors to suggest translations. And hurry before someone – not me – rips your database and does this. Lookup Crowdsourcing.
You are already the superior translation site! Add user translations and become invincible.
May 10th, 2012 at 9:09 am
@Victor Alejandro: Vast majority of the sentences are English-based
@Jan Glorieux: Thank you for your remark, we will delete the sentence!
@Jan Tångring: Thank you for your nice words and your feedback! We already allow users to add their own translations (we have encouraged that, in fact, since the founding of the website) which we later verify for correctness.
May 10th, 2012 at 10:12 am
@Asia: you should make it immediate – you should put an input field for “suggested translation” next to the “Sorry, no exact translations found”. I don’t want to go some place else to start a discussion, I want to quickly make a contribution and then leave. You could get much more feedback that way.
May 10th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Thanks, Jan, for this valuable feedback, we are working on our new layout right now so I hope we’ll be able to implement it soon!