Buy a language course instead (Systran Enterprise)

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Product:	Systran Enterprise
Date:	08/05/01 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: a waste of money, it will cause confusion

Having some German friends, I thought it would be very useful to have some translation software, as my German is not very good yet.

As luck would have it, a computer mag featured a demo version of "Systran Personal" - the only limitations were on the amount of languages it would translate to/from. The full version has twelve language whilst the demo had six. It claims to be "intelligent", recognising things such as word contractions (I'm instead of I am) and phrases including slang and common sayings that may be considered as "bad English" but are in everyday use. Great, just what I needed. The "enterprise" version is "supposed" to be more intelligent and excludes things like formatting of emails and so on.

Installation of "systran" was simple and straight forward and was very easy and quick to use. Once the program is launched, a very small box with the buttons needed to do the job. "Systran" works by the user highlighting the desired text, deciding which language to translate the text to. This goes to the Windows clipboard and as soon as the "translate" button is hit, one can copy from the clipboard where the translated text is needed. Simple.

Okay then. How did it preform? Very badly. As a test, I translated (with the "aid" of "Systran"), three of my web site pages into German and emailed them to my one of German friends to see how well "Systran" had done. Obviously, I left out the html (web page) coding for the translation.

The result? "I don't know what language you used. Was it Chinese?" she replied. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The "German" web pages did some "vocal contractions" ("they're" as opposed to "they are") and slang, so they were a good test. Pity the software failed. As my friend said, it would proberbly be okay fo
r translating the odd word but as a lot of the bigger German words are actually made up of lots of little words combined, I think it would struggle with the most basic of basic sentences. One to avoid. To ensure my German is better, I've ordered a GCSE course and will do the translating myself.

Summary: