Google translates Indonesian
2008/09/30 filed under /webWith quite some excitement, I read that Google was adding 11 more languages to their translate product. Not so much that I care about Catalan, Latvian, or Ukrainian, but Indonesian was listed as well!
Since I'm still "studying" the language, this might be helpful! But my hopes were smashed within a second. The translator is beyond poor and completely unworkable at this moment. The translations in either English or Dutch (two languages I know to some extent), were completely not usable.
The Indonesian language is quite different from Dutch and English (which are quite similar). The language has very few grammatical rules and a plural form is usually created by using the same word twice "Toko" means shop. "Toko toko" means shops, but Indonesian blogs mainly use "toko2" for that.
Another thing is that past or present forms are usually non-existent. The tense is made up out of the context (so "I went to the shop" and "I'm going to the shop" are both "saya ke toko").
Fairly hard to translate, I agree, but sederet.com has a nice approach. Simply take each word and translate that. That will give you a basic idea of what's going on.
Google also offers you to improve the results, but since my dislike towards this company is too big, I doubt I want to help them. Let's see if others do. Then translate would be the second google product without an equal alternative (maps is currently beating all the others, in my humble opinion).
