Italian Translation? Those translator sites!

[toysrus]

Hi everybody! I need to send an e-mail to someone in Italy, he speaks & reads no english. And I cant read Italian or write a letter in Italian. So my question is do those online English to Italian sites work accurately? I already wrote the letter in English, hit the translate button but i have no clue is the Italian is correct. Which Translation site works best? Or are all the same?

Thanks!!

[Mikey]

Sorry, the only Italian I know is .... foooged abow it ... and ... I don wan noth'in to happ'in to Fredo while Mama's still alive.

[cjefferys]

I've always used Babelfish (hmmm, looks like it's now a part of Yahoo, when did that happen??)

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt?fr=avbbf-us

I've used it for German and French with good results. The English translations turned out pretty good, so I assumed the reverse was also true. I had an entire transaction with an ebay buyer take place in German, using Babelfish, and everything worked great (and I know maybe five words in German). I've only found it not to work well for languages that are very different from English. For example, I've tried it with Japanese, where the grammar, sentence structuring, etc. is very different from English, and the translations turned out to be very bizarre. It should work ok for Italian though.

[misterdroid]

They work pretty well... but!... this is the catch, don't mention you are using one.
I was buying a lot of stuff from Ebay spain last year. As my spanish is weak, and Spain spanish is really formal I used a translator. Worked well, some translations were a little funky, but ok.
Some sellers I built a relationship with and would deal with outside of ebay. the emails got longer, more complex, and once in a while something wouldn't be clear, so I'd tell them I was using a translator and didn't understand. they would then "dumb down" which would render an even worse translation. Sometimes the translation would be total nonsense.
Apparently it is really important to have the sentence structure remain intact or it pretty much plays havoc with the translator. Having someone write to you as if you are a brain damaged 6 year old is not a good thing. I had to show some emails to a spanish speaking friend to work out.
But from the amount of contact you have during an ebay transaction, or something similar, they work great.
Babelfish was instrumental in acquiring a good chunk of my collection.

[miguet]

I've used this site in the past.

Reverso : On-line Translator, Free Automatic Translation, Dictionary

[toysrus]

Thanks!

Thanks i'll use this one below!

I've always used Babelfish (hmmm, looks like it's now a part of Yahoo, when did that happen??)

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt?fr=avbbf-us

I've used it for German and French with good results. The English translations turned out pretty good, so I assumed the reverse was also true. I had an entire transaction with an ebay buyer take place in German, using Babelfish, and everything worked great (and I know maybe five words in German). I've only found it not to work well for languages that are very different from English. For example, I've tried it with Japanese, where the grammar, sentence structuring, etc. is very different from English, and the translations turned out to be very bizarre. It should work ok for Italian though.