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I asked my latest guest from China to write their review in Chinese since Air now shows to people considering booking reviews from guests from their own country first. Here is what he wrote:
世外桃源一样的温馨住宅!房主James超级好心,在各方面都给予我们悉心照顾。尤其是对于我这样首次来澳大利亚、在左侧开车的人,James提前提供的路线非常好走。从房源到蒸汽火车和企鹅游行都很方便。房源周边风景优美,早晨能听到各种鸟叫声。整体非常宁静,基本感觉不到楼上的声音。房间非常清洁,根本没有养有宠物的痕迹。设施完善、空间充裕,关键有房主用心的打理。让我和家人在隆冬季节感受到了“面朝大海,春暖花开”的喜悦。希望更多的人能来体验。
Google translate suggests it was all good. Interestingly the first word “世外桃源” translates as “Paradise” however “世外桃源一” translates as “Xanadu”. I’ll take either of those
Anybody else have experiences of guests writing reviews in their own language and then discovering things: good, bad or just interesting, when translating? Is Google translate the best online translator for Chinese?
I don’t see Paradise or Xanadu in the review. Here is what translate.google.com gave me as the translation:
The homeowner James is kind and heartfelt in all respects. Especially for me for the first time to come to Australia, driving on the left side of the people, James ahead of the route is very good to go. From the property to the steam train and penguin parade are very convenient. Housing around the beautiful scenery in the morning to hear a variety of birds call. The whole is very quiet, basically feel the sound upstairs. The room was very clean and there was no trace of the pet. Facilities, ample space, the key owner of the heart care. Let me and his family in the winter season feel the “facing the sea, spring” joy. Hope that more people can come to experience.
My experience has been that many people from elsewhere, especially those that were less comfortable with English, write the reviews in their native language. With the sorting of reviews based on location, I don’t think this is a huge issue.
However, I wish the reviews were still in chronological order.</rant revival>
That’s bizarre - it has now removed the first word from the translation. The first word is “世外桃源” which translates in English as “Paradise”. Or “世外桃源-” translates as “Xanadu”. You can see this if you just put it into Google translate on its own. Previously it was including it in the whole translation. It is strange that it has changed the translation in the last couple of hours. I imagine they use some sort of dynamic updating but WTF Google?
Aren’t the two words written slightly differently?
There’s a symbol like a hyphen at the end of the second appearance of the word and I assume it is in the original because you have it within quotation marks.
We used to have a host on the forum (S. Chen) who could probably answer your question since she is a native Chinese but barring that, there doesn’t appear to be anyone “in-house” on whom we could call to translate.
Addendum:
Guess what…I just tried both versions of the word online and by adding the “dash”, it changed the word from “paradise” to “Xanadu”!
