I used to be a native French speaker and I think it is very badly written but the sense is intelligible, which it may not be with the babelfish version. You certainly wouldn't want to use it as is in marketing your property. At a pinch you could use it to translate correspondence with non-English speakers.
The site also translates to and from German and Spanish - anyone know if it's any good for these?
It seems to me that these translation systems work pretty well when they are asked to translate "words" from one language to another. The problems appear to be “context� and “sentence construction�.
I only use my translator for languages with which I have at least a working knowledge, i.e. English/French and French/English. I use the translator to produce a first working draft and then I edit the end result. It knows far more French words than I do but it doesn’t always get it right.
I ran a very simple test recently. I typed “Dear Mr Knighting�, used my translator for English/French and then French/English. I finished up as “Expensive Mr Knighting�. My wife said, “How did it know? It got it spot on!� Embarrassingly correct but not in context.
I used to have an English/French and French/English translator that stopped and gave me options when there was more than one translation for a word. I think it was called “French Assistant� and was produced by “Microtac Software�. If I remember rightly, not only did it translate documents but it also translated individual words, conjugated verbs, provided gender agreement, included all accented characters and allowed me to choose the proper entry when there was a multiple translation for a word. Might be worth researching.
