on-line translators

[barney]

has anyone had a good experience with an online translator.
i was reading through a mate's facebook profile and there ws a message posted there from one of his mates, they are both turkish, living in istanbul.
in turkish, this is the text i read, below that is the translation, it's bizarre!
BORSA NASIL ÇALIŞIR ?

> Bir zamanlar köyün birine bir adam gelmişş ve tanesi 10 $'dan maymun alacağını söylemiş. Köyde çok maymun olduğu için köylüler sevinçle ormana koşup maymunları yakalamaya başlamışlar.
>
> Adam,binlerce maymunu 10'$ dan satın alınca ortalıkta maymunlar azalmış,yakalaması zorlaşmış.Köylüler tam maymun yakalamaktan vazgeçecekken adam tanesine 20 $ vereceğini söylemiş.
>
>
> Tekrar heveslenen köylüler tekrar maymunları yakalamaya başlamışlar.Bir süre sonra adam da fiyatı 25 $'a çıkarmış.Ancak bırak yakalamayı ,maymuna rastlamak bile çok zorlaşmış.Bunun üzerine adam fiyatı 50 $'a çıkardığını,ancak kendisinin işi olduğu için şehre gitmesi gerektiğini,yardımcısının onun yerine alım yapacağını söylemiş.
>
>
> O yokken yardımcısı köylülere demiş ki; "Şu büyük kafesteki maymunlar var ya ben onların tamamını size tanesi 35'$ dan satayım,siz de adam gelince ona 50 $ dan satarsınız."
>
>
> Köylüler bütün birikimlerini bir araya toplayarak bütün maymunları satın almışlar, sonra ne adamı ne de yardımcısını bir daha gören olmamış.
>
> Şimdi borsanın nasıl çalıştığı hakkında biraz bilgi sahibi olmuşsunuzdur.
>
>
>
> Yabancı sermayenin borsada cirit atmasından memnun olan zavallılara hitaben..

in english?
How does the stock exchange work? > Times the village one a man (gelmiss) and her kernel 10 $ dan has told your ugly credit. Catch the monkeys after assigns the forest with the villager joy because she becomes very ugly at the village they have started. > > Ugly 10 $ (azalmis),(yakalamasi) has got difficult when dan purchases Primates around.Full villager ugly catch (vazgececekken) to a man kernel 20 $ she has told your debt. > > > Villager ugly interested catch repeatedly they have started.There is a period later man price 25

[Tango51]

Perhaps it started out more like this, a parody of how the stock market functions:

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers
that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the
forest, and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the
villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at
$20.
This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started
catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to
their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so
little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had
to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of
him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. "Look at all
these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to
you
at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for
$50 each."

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

[dmdigital]

I use French->English a lot on Google Translate. Get varying degrees of success with it. Generally I find it gets confused (ie poor translation) the more words in the sentence or the more colloquial the statement is that you give it to work on.

[BBC]

I use AltaVista Babelfish but you must have an understanding of both languages to comprehend and make allowance for the differences in grammar, word order, and those words which simply, do not exist in the other language.

[barney]

yeah i mostly use babel fish, but i couldn't get turkish from it, so i had to search and funnily enough found one called "babylon" not that good and has a lot of pop-up style help cues that just annoy you.

[dmdigital]

I'd use babelfish too, if work didn't have it blocked :confused: