>>And the moral of the story is... (left as an exercise for the reader).
>>
>>I do translations myself, and had tried translation software several times, in the hope of later doing some "cleaning-up". I have come to the conclusion - confirmed once again by Dragan's translation sample! - that it is
more work for me to clean it up than to translate it in the first place.
>
>The moral of the story is that automatic translation may work, unless one of the languages is English. The overall ambiguity of it (90%+ of words have multiple meanings) makes automatic translation next to impossible. It's not that the software is bad, it's that the language is so unwieldy.
Come to think of it, I never tried automatic translations in other languages. Good point; I must try it eventually.
It should be noted that in English, the same word not only may have multiple meanings, but in many cases, the meanings are different word categories (i.e., noun, verb, adjective...).
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
