Can revleft start a language course?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Hello Comrades

I want to start learning Spanish and arabic, but i have no money and my computers shit so i cant download any software, i understand it might be alot asking revleft to start running language courses, but, you guys, the mods, admins, hell all of you are fabulous.

Could a new language forum be set up and could we have set courses where words phrases and pronunciation are written up, then at the end of the week we could have group classes taught by a mod/admin who speaks the language being taught.

Revleft provides such great services allready, i know im probably asking too much, but this would help us working class people who frequent revleft who cant afford rosseta stone and have 6 year old computers that dont allow any language courses.

Thanks big hugs
Tuvia

I learned German by just using online free courses & free translator converters.

www.translate.google.com

[Martin Blank]

Try asking in the Online Classes forum. I would imagine that others might be interested.

[el_chavista]

Feel free to start any thread at the Spanish RevLeft International discussion forum, like this chit-chat en español (http://www.revleft.com/vb/chit-chat-en-t120639/index.html) :)

[Black Sheep]

I ve thought about this as well, in fact, any course started here would be so kick ass. (i m talking about subjects outside revolutionary leftism)
Unfortunately, the level of the course and the quality would be poor compared to so many other online classes and tutorials, as lots of time would be required to build an effective course , time which naturally noone here has.

[Tablo]

If you need to find people to help you learning a language you can always check out http://www.interpals.net/. You can meet lots of foreigners there to help you.

[Rjevan]

I learned German by just using online free courses & free translator converters.

www.translate.google.com (http://www.translate.google.com)
I don't want to disillusion you but free online translators like the google translator are... suboptimal to put it nicely. Judging from the German, English and Russian translations I got when using such translators to back up my translation I'd say that the results are rather creative writing than accurate translations. ;)
And sometimes they even falsify the meaning of the text.

[Tablo]

I don't want to disillusion you but free online translators like the google translator are... suboptimal to put it nicely. Judging from the German, English and Russian translations I got when using such translators to back up my translation I'd say that the results are rather creative writing than accurate translations. ;)
And sometimes they even falsify the meaning of the text.
They aren't too bad for translating specific words into German, but online dictionaries are a better choice.

Also translators pretty much fail at word conjugation.

[Ligeia]

Some years ago "Online Classes" worked nicely and there were language courses, but then again it's pretty difficult to teach or learn a language like this. Maybe you can start a thread in any language forum (which you want to learn from) for language-learning reasons only, to ask question about grammatics and the like.
I would recommend you this site here:
http://lang-8.com/
On this page people write texts in any language they're learning and others who are native speakers will correct them (often explaining you grammatics..etc.).

[Dr Mindbender]

theres a language study group if anyone cares.

[Martin Blank]

I don't want to disillusion you but free online translators like the google translator are... suboptimal to put it nicely. Judging from the German, English and Russian translations I got when using such translators to back up my translation I'd say that the results are rather creative writing than accurate translations. ;)
And sometimes they even falsify the meaning of the text.

Rjevan, I know this is sort of off-topic, but I'd be interested in your view of the PROMT online translation system -- http://www.online-translator.com/. Of all the online translators I've used, this one seems the best to me. What do you think?

[el_chavista]

I gave a try to the "prompt" translator. No way, you got to edit "manually" the translations to make them more meaningful.
I guess you need a super program and a main frame computer to deal with linguistic problems like orthography and semantics. As a "deep blue" like computer for playing chess.

[Martin Blank]

I gave a try to the "prompt" translator. No way, you got to edit "manually" the translations to make them more meaningful.
I guess you need a super program and a main frame computer to deal with linguistic problems like orthography and semantics. As a "deep blue" like computer for playing chess.

I wasn't expecting miracles from PROMT, but I do think it's a better option than Babelfish or Google for machine translation.

[Incendiarism]

That'd be great. I've been meaning to teach myself french for some time.

[Rjevan]

Rjevan, I know this is sort of off-topic, but I'd be interested in your view of the PROMT online translation system -- http://www.online-translator.com/. Of all the online translators I've used, this one seems the best to me. What do you think?
I'd say you're right for German, I tried some translations, the quality varied but most were better than Google and way better than Babelfish. But the Russian ones were worse than Google, I mean you roughly understand what the text is about but the sentence structure was terrible and some words were translated outright wrong.

[sanpal]

I'd say you're right for German, I tried some translations, the quality varied but most were better than Google and way better than Babelfish. But the Russian ones were worse than Google, I mean you roughly understand what the text is about but the sentence structure was terrible and some words were translated outright wrong.

How the russian translations could be worse if PROMT is product of the russian firm? Perhaps it's a particular quality of the language? English and German both have Latin roots, Russian is not.

[Rjevan]

How the russian translations could be worse if PROMT is product of the russian firm? Perhaps it's a particular quality of the language? English and German both have Latin roots, Russian is not.
No idea, but if I take e.g. this text (from a RIA article (http://rian.ru/science/20100404/218139130.html) about astronauts and the ISS): "В настоящий момент вновь прибывшие проходят по так называемому "аварийному маршруту". "Так принято, что новые хозяева МКС должны сначала внимательно изучить так называемый "маршрут срочного покидания станции", - пояснил РИА Новости представитель ЦУП."
PROMT translation: "At the moment newcomers pass on so-called "to an emergency route"."So it is accepted that new owners МКС should study attentively at first so-called" a route urgent покидания stations ", - representative ЦУП has explained RIA Novosti news agency."

You can guess the meaning but the translation doesn't make too much sense and "a route urgent покидания stations" won't help anybody who doesn't understand Russian. Google isn't really much better but still: "Currently, the newcomers are on the so-called "emergency route". "It is assumed that the new owners of the ISS should first carefully study the so-called" emergency escape route stations ", - explained RIA Novosti representative MCC."

[sanpal]

No idea, but if I take e.g. this text (from a RIA article (http://rian.ru/science/20100404/218139130.html) about astronauts and the ISS): "В настоящий момент вновь прибывшие проходят по так называемому "аварийному маршруту". "Так принято, что новые хозяева МКС должны сначала внимательно изучить так называемый "маршрут срочного покидания станции", - пояснил РИА Новости представитель ЦУП."
PROMT translation: "At the moment newcomers pass on so-called "to an emergency route"."So it is accepted that new owners МКС should study attentively at first so-called" a route urgent покидания stations ", - representative ЦУП has explained RIA Novosti news agency."

You can guess the meaning but the translation doesn't make too much sense and "a route urgent покидания stations" won't help anybody who doesn't understand Russian. Google isn't really much better but still: "Currently, the newcomers are on the so-called "emergency route". "It is assumed that the new owners of the ISS should first carefully study the so-called" emergency escape route stations ", - explained RIA Novosti representative MCC."

Indeed there is the problems with translations with the help of the any types of e-translaters because live language is live language. I've studied English during two years in the end of sixtieth with the help of English self-taught and it was enough level for beginner. But it isn't enough for translating of ordinary texts of revleft forums here. I have bought e-translator PROMT example of 2003 year. I'm sure it is worse than PROMT of 2010, but every e-translator (online translator) will never replace human skilled translation. May be in the nearest future who knows. If you wish to know how i write (and this post as well) i write it in PROMT e-translator's window in English and see synchronous translation in Russian in the window below: if Russian text loses a sense then i correct English text till Russian text become sensible. So my posts are depended from PROMT ability and from my modest knowledge of English. If to suppose that someone doesn't know language at all he/she cannot to check how e-translator has made its work.

[Invincible Summer]

The best German to other language translation site I've found (and use extensively) is www.leo.org (http://www.leo.org)