Dictionary and Translation

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Maybe there will come a day when machines take over what humans do, but not today.

My favorite site to use is Naver dictionary which finds Korean meaning for English, Chinese and Japanese words, even technical terms and it links to encylopedia.

There's also Duam dictionary, but I've never used it.

I love this online chinese dictionary, Nciku, because it allows users to "write" words. Sometimes I will write the chinese word, then copy and paste it on the Naver dictionary to retrieve the Korean word.

A few sites, like Google Translate and Yahoo Babel Fish, provide translation which can be very helpful in getting the gist of the content. But be warned that most of the time I get a good laugh over the translated text.

Here I have borrowed a work associate's name as an email example. BTW: Like Chinese compound surnames, eg 司徒, there are Korean family names with two words.

Basically, the email reads, as translated by myself:

Hello. I am Namgung Yong from Beyond Tech.
Currently, the results are not good, so it seems that we will have to work hard.
Regards, Namgung Yong.

Here's the translation from Google Translate.

Dream fro Namgung???? At least Google got "hello" correctly...

Here's what Yahoo Babel Fish got.

"안녕하세요" is Goodbye??? Haven't "hello" already "Goodbye"...
And Mr South Palace ( 남궁) must be very eager to do do.

Translation widget from Mac also bids farewell before the message even started.