Machine Translation - English to Chinese

I think the answer’s probably going to be no, but I’ll try anyway.

Are there any machine translation (MT) websites or software that do an acceptable job?

Searching here suggests no, but this is technology - it changes so often, so what was impossible 6 months ago may be possible today.

I need something so that I can type in English and get correct Chinese back. Or at least 95% correct. Not pinyin to Chinese. English-Chinese. Simplified characters would be ok, but traditional would be better.

The reason I need it is for a possible business opportunity that requires communication in Chinese, but the Chinese speakers on the other end will give me a bit of leeway, not being a native Chinese speaker, hence the 95% accuracy.

I know, I know - go to school and learn. I would if I could. In fact, I’d love to, but I live in a place that doesn’t have any Chinese schools for foreigners. So I pick up what I can, which doesn’t extend to writing.

Cheers, and happy CNY,

Craig

Machine translation does a pretty crappy job all around, but if you write in simple, clear English (avoid slang, idioms, jargon, puns, etc.) using short sentences and choose words with minimal multiple meanings, the results in Chinese would be better. And the recipient should be made aware that you’re using machine translation.

Machine translation in the opposite direction is less reliable because Chinese is a much higher context language than English.

Not really worth it, and I’m not saying that just because of my job. Too many words with multiple meanings, phrasal verbs, etc. etc. If it’s for your business, I wouldn’t risk providing really good images with really crappy ad copy – especially since it’s the creative industry. Now, if it were for an ad for teaching English – maybe, because there is a certain number of people who will say, “Ah his Chinese is not great, but his English is outstanding.” I think you’d still get beat by someone who had a good translation done (or better yet, had good promotional materials written from the ground up in Chinese, without too much reference to English advertising intended for English speakers.)

Thanks, I guess I’ll give it a miss.

For chinese => english, the annotation tool is usefull:
chinese-tools.com/tools/annotation.html (soon in traditional)

Doctor Eye! It’s one of the best softwares out there for translation, though it’s not perfect, of course.