I lied. But this WILL be the last English blog entry, I promise. I posted the last entry before actually checking to make sure the English translation made some sense... and unfortunately it is pretty jumbled. The computer sometimes gets confused in Arabic, so I'll clarify a few things:
1. In Arabic, the verb conjugation for "I" and "she" in the past tense is written the same, so the computer sometimes mixes up subject pronouns. Other times, the subject is integrated into the verb conjugation and disappears in the translation (for example "he wrote" might just be translated as "wrote").
2. It can also confuse direct object pronouns because plural antecedents are referred to as "her" in Arabic. For example, "Bring them here" in Arabic might be translated by the computer as "Bring her here" in English, even if the antecedent was "books," for instance.
3. In many cases, the Arabic verb precedes the subject. The computer does not pick up on this, so it sometimes creates a fictive subject at the beginning of the sentence and turns the real subject into a direct/indirect object. For example, it translates the second sentence of my first entry as "She asked me my family and some of my friends that briefed them on my adventures in Egypt..." It actually means "My family and some of my friends asked me to brief (update) them..."
4. Prepositions are a nightmare to translate in any language.
5. Some Arabic phrases simply don't translate literally into English. The computer translates one phrase I used as "contractor by the College." The phrase actually means "I am fully committed to it." I can't offer any guidance here...
There are obviously a lot of problems with computer translations, and I've only listed a small number of them here. If I notice any other major ones, I'll post them. Otherwise, all I can say is good luck, and at the very least, enjoy the pictures that I upload (pictures are a universal language, after all).
