It would most probably be safe to assume that all Filipinos who go online have at least a working knowledge of English. That’s possibly why there haven’t been many sources of Filipino-language material on the Internet, because there just wasn’t much need (or so many of us think).
But there is a need: a need to preserve our heritage, which can only be properly illustrated in our native tongue. (Let’s not go into the linguistic rivalries between the major language groups of our country, however. When I speak of ‘native tongue’ and refer to it as Filipino or Tagalog, that’s only because that’s what the powers that be have designated it to be.)
In this age of the Internet, one way to ensure the preservation and propagation of our heritage is to make our language be pervasive online. Or, at the very least, available.It’s a very welcome development, therefore, that Google is now offering machine translation of Filipino to several other languages besides English (and vice-versa).
Aside from this online tool being of great use to Filipinos, you’d be surprised at the number of foreigners who’re studying Tagalog (not to mention Cebuano).
I gave Google Translate™ a test drive, converting sentences to/from English and Filipino, but I’m afraid it was rather disappointing. The quality of the results wasn’t yet approaching the level of, say, English-to-Japanese machine translation. Even simple sentences came out strangely worded. But that’s OK, I’m sure it will improve in the foreseeable future.
Here’s a statement from Google, during the launch of the service yesterday:
“At Google we believe that the Internet is about enabling access to the world’s information—all the world’s information, regardless of language,” said Derek Callow, Marketing Manager, Google Southeast Asia. “Today’s launch of Google Translate in Filipino language makes it easier for millions of Filipino-speaking Internet users all over the world to search and access much more web content in their own local language.”
“Google Translate also allows Internet users to contribute to the improvement of translations to and from the Filipino language. When users come across an inaccurate translation, the tool allows them to suggest a better translation than the machine translation,” Callow said
I wonder when we’d start seeing machine translators for Cebuano, Ilocano, Dinabaw…?
This is great news for the most of us who are always in a bind on finding that right English term for a certain Tagalog word although as I found out later, Google Translate still needs a lot of rework. I had fun trying it out myself and laughed hard at the english translation of some common Pinoy words.
For a lack of a better translation, "Walanghiya ka!' came out as "Walanghiya you!"
Ngyeh!
Hahaha!
congratulation for translation. google is the best