|
I've been learning Japanese for the last few years so I'm a real person with real language translation needs. But learning Japanese isn't the only
reason I use Babylon. I use it on search engines to double, triple and quadruple search results. This works especially well when searching for images.
If you search for images with the English word "peacock" results in English will be returned. But if you put the Korean word for peacock, 공작
, into the search engine, you'll find new image results that wouldn't have been available to you in English.
Since I know enough Japanese and a smidge of Spanish to get by, I put Babylon to the test and was delighted with the results.
English to Japanese
-The mountain is tall. = 山は高いです。
- I am going to the store to buy a watermelon. = 私はスイカを買うために店に行きます。
English to Spanish
- I have a book. = Tengo un libro.
Then I tested it the other way, from Japanese to English. I wrote this sentence in Japanese to mean "I listen to music while eating."
Japanese to English
- 音楽を聞きながら食事します。
= I eat while hearing music.
Needless to say, Babylon passed the BeSparkly test in a flurry of glittery goodness.
Babylon also helps me learn Japanese even though it's not a function of the program to teach.
For instance, as I was working on this article, I typed in the English sentence "the mountain is
tall" and it pulled up the Japanese sentence, "yama wa takai desu," (which I already
knew to be the correct translation).
I've known the word "takai" for years, but I always write
it in its hiragana form たかい because its easier. The standard written form is 高い. Even though I've seen
the word 高い written many times, it never sank into my brain until I used it in the same sentence with the
word mountain. Mountains are tall. The character 高 is tall like a pagoda and oh my gosh, it created a memorable association and I learned and retained
new information.
Not stopping there, I plugged 高い into my Japanese dictionary and it pulled up a different kanji (character) version of the same word; 高井.
Both 高い and 高井 are pronounced takai, but the first one means "tall" or "high" while the second one is the version used for the last name Takai. Since 高井 is just
the 高 and a fancy # sign, it's easy for me to remember.
So low and behold, I've retained two new Japanese kanji all because I was fiddling around on Babylon for this article. Now that's sparkly!
Did you know that you can use Babylon to translate key words and phrases that drive
traffic to your web site? Yep, you sure can!
BeSparkly has daily traffic from all over the world due to searches that match
keywords on the site in Japanese and Korean. I simply stumbled upon this information
when I saw where my web traffic was coming from after posting in Japanese to amuse myself. So then I
added a few select Korean words (because I love Dong Bang Shin Ki) and even more people popped up.
How cool is that?
|
