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翻訳機能とスペルチェック機能
英語を学習するときにコンピューターは強い味方になります。試しに無料の翻訳サイトやワードのソフトに付いているスペルチェック機能を活用してみましょう。でも、頼りすぎるのは危険です。
Terrible translators, suspicious spellers
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AltaVista の翻訳サイト BabelFish
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Last week, talking about typing, I said it's ridiculous that computers can't simply hear and understand what people say. Well, this week I have another complaint: Why can't computers learn English?!
There are some online translation services, like AltaVista's Babel Fish, and they can sometimes provide decent translations, but sometimes, it's totally wrong. When you enter 魔法使い, for example, Babel Fish translates it as "magical using" or sometimes even "magical errand."
Go ahead and try it for yourself (http://babelfish.altavista.com). Enter some text you want to translate in the big, white blank. Maybe you can just copy and paste from another document. Be sure to choose the right language combination, such as "English to Japanese" or "Japanese to English." Then press the Translate button. You'll find that the translation is OK perhaps two-thirds of the time, but there are still far too many wrong translations. Some day, computer translation will achieve 99-percent accuracy, but until then, keep studying your English!
Even though the computer can't do everything for you, at least it can help. For one thing, it can be pretty useful as a spell-checker. Many people already have some version of Microsoft Word, the most popular word-processing package. While you type, it will put a red, squiggly line under words it thinks are misspelled.
Like just now. I accidentally typed "squggly" instead of squiggly. A right-click on "squggly," brings up various other spellings, such as squiggly, snugly and smugly. You can see the correct spelling is the top choice.
But you still have to be careful about computer spell-checking. Once, using an old English version of Word, I correctly typed "Kanagawa," but the American software wanted to change that into "Kansas." In addition, the spell-checker won't help you with homonyms, like when you write, "It's two bad," instead of, "It's too bad." People's names are especially tricky. I heard a spell-checking program once changed a man's name, Myron, into "moron." That's a real disaster.
So definitely use the spell- checker on your word-processor, but don't assume the computer is smarter than you. Always think carefully before taking the machine's suggestion. Doesn't it make you feel good knowing that people, not computers, are still the smartest?
Shukan ST: May 23, 2003
(C) All rights reserved
- ridiculous
- ばかげている
- complaint
- 不平
- decent
- まずまずの
- enter
- 入力する
- errand
- お使い
- Go ahead and try it for yourself
- 自分で試してみてください
- blank
- 空欄
- paste
- 張り付ける
- document
- 文書
- Be sure to 〜
- 〜するように注意しましょう
- combination
- 組み合わせ
- two-thirds of the time
- 3回に2回は
- are still far too many 〜
- それでも〜が多すぎる
- achieve
- 達成する
- accuracy
- 正確さ
- Microsoft Word
- ワープロソフトの名
- squiggly line
- 波線の線
- are misspelled
- つづりが間違っている
- accidentally
- うっかり
- instead of 〜
- 〜でなく
- right-click
- 右クリック
- snugly
- 心地よく
- smugly
- 独りよがりで
- homonyms
- 同音異義語
- tricky
- やっかいな
- moron
- まぬけ
- disaster
- 大失敗
- definitely
- ぜひ
- assume 〜
- 当然〜だと決め込む
- smarter
- より賢い