And in English that means.....

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Not that I don't like going to sites that are in different languages like German or French, or Scottish, but I sometimes just want to know what they say.

Does anyone out there know an accurate online translator? The ones that I find seem to butcher the sentences. And having a bad translation is just about as bad as having no translation.

-EDIT- Not to sound ignorant, but is there a quick way to tell the differences between languages such as German and Dutch (just examples). The all look Greek to me (bad pun, I know).

 

I don't think that there is such thing as a good online translator. I discovered so when people tried to hold a debate which someone who only spoke Spanish, and no one else did

 

Jaguar, while I don't speak Dutch if you see words with double vowels particularly 'aa' in them then its likely Dutch. As for German this character is a double s 'ß' I think it is unique to German but I'm not positive.
In general though consider looking at a site such as yahoo that you can view in many different languages and look at likely candidates and compare words if you find some matches then you likely have a match.

 

The main difference between Dutch and German is that Dutch is full of ij's while German is not

And there's no such thing as good computer-based translator. If you think you have one, just try some reported speech or more complex syntax and you'll be convinced.

 

Dutch and German have a lot in common, because they both originate from the same branch of the language tree.

 

Also, Germans make use of the 'umlaut' like ö, where dutchies would use eu for the same sound.
Or Ü, where Dutchies would use UU. except for German words also used in Dutch language, like Überhaubt.

Dutchies use these " too, but mostly in cases to show where where the sound of a word is changed.
Like eer (honor, say 'ihr') and geëerd (honored, say 'guh-Ihrd')

 

I use this translator when I do crossword puzzles and they ask for simple one word translations.

I haven't tried it for full sentences before, so it might not translate grammatically correctly.

 

I've always just used this site I found while I was browsing for just such a thing: www.translate.ru. It seems to do fairly well, and has the option to translate all the text on a given URL.
As has been said already, however, no translator can overcome the fact that different languages simply don't convey ideas in the same way.