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Good project, bad translation

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throbscottle

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I refer to this project:
https://forums.futura-sciences.com/...testeur-de-condensateurs-electrolytiques.html

I'll get round to building it sometime. But I've been reading it using google translate, and it doesn't do a good job at all. Highly recommend not using it for technical documents - unless someone knows how to turn on a mode for it. For example, it translates "fils" as "son" (the more common meaning) when "wire" is meant. Even worse, it translates "l'ESR" as "ISA". Don't know how they arrived at that... I did try "contribute a better translation" but it hasn't made any difference.

Much as though I dislike using MS products, Bing does a much better job.
 
Bonjour, it looks like French.
I was forced to learn French in school because 20% of Canadians speeky zee only French. But I never met a French-speaking person until I was about 20 years old and I meet one about every 5 years so I forgot it.
Canadian kids in school today might be forced to learn Chinese and Punjabi.
 
Out of the many Indian languages, I was of the impression that Urdu was the most widely spoken/understood. Perhaps someone can correct me?
They tried to teach me French in school, and I tried to learn it as an adult too. Still hasn't done me any good... We'd do well in this country to all learn Polish, Urdu and Mandarin.
 
But I've been reading it using google translate, and it doesn't do a good job at all.

My daughter spent a year in the Netherlands, so I've used google translate quite a lot - Dutch translates REALLY badly :D

As for living/working there, language wasn't a problem - pretty well everyone speaks decent English (and if you go the cinema the films are likely to be in English - or at least American :D). At the company where she worked the official language was English, as it was a German owned company and the Dutch absolutely refuse to attempt to speak German - and English is the International language of Science anyway.

Like AG, I also did French at school - probably as bad (or worse?) than him :D - I failed my French O Level.
 
My wife is from Spain and came to Canada without speaking English or French. She learned English, French and a few other languages in university. Her parents and relatives spoke only Spanish so I went to Spanish Night School.
Everybody there were already speaking Spanish except me because they went there to meet other Spanish people, not to learn Spanish. I never went back.

My son met a girl from Mexico who could not speak English. They speak "Spanglish" together but I cannot understand her. They got married and now she goes to English school. She might never learn English and talk with me because she always talks in Spanish with my wife and everyone else.

This off topic reminded me of when I almost learned "perfect pitch" in music. I could remember a pitch for an hour or two but not longer.
I haven't thought about it for at least 10 years so just now I thought about how "middle C" sounds like and played a You Tube demo of it. I WAS WRONG!! (But I was pretty close):)
 
This off topic reminded me of when I almost learned "perfect pitch" in music.

My aforementioned daughter, who whilst been a Chemist is also a musician - and while I don't know if she has 'perfect' pitch she's certainly pretty close to it - she tunes instruments (accurately) by ear. One of the first things she said to her current boyfriend was to point out that one of the notes on his bagpipes was slightly out of tune :D (how would you tell? :p)
 
When you have perfect pitch then your brain acts like a frequency counter. You hear a tone and you know what pitch (frequency) it has. You can tune an instrument without using a reference tone to beat against.
Some people are not musical and do not recognize musical chords and octaves. To them, music is simply a bunch of sounds (noises?).

I can hear that a musical tone is slightly out of tune. It sounds "wrong". Singers make recordings many times over and over before everything is perfect (24 takes?) but when they sing on a live show I can hear the mistakes they make when they are slightly out of tune and sound like amateurs.

Nigel, I hate the sounds from bagpipes. Maybe because they are always played too loud at full volume and the drone reed plays continuously. The sounds are too shrill and are nasal.
I wonder why Scottish guys wear a skirt?
 
I have a friend who has pitch-perfect hearing - she finds anything out of tune to be incredibly irritating!
 
When you have perfect pitch then your brain acts like a frequency counter. You hear a tone and you know what pitch (frequency) it has. You can tune an instrument without using a reference tone to beat against.
Some people are not musical and do not recognize musical chords and octaves. To them, music is simply a bunch of sounds (noises?).

I can hear that a musical tone is slightly out of tune. It sounds "wrong". Singers make recordings many times over and over before everything is perfect (24 takes?) but when they sing on a live show I can hear the mistakes they make when they are slightly out of tune and sound like amateurs.

There was a huge charity concert a number of years back (2005) called 'Live8', and a singer called Dido (who I really liked) performed at it, in duet with Youssou N'Dour - she was incredibly flat - and Youssou just kept staring at her, presumably he couldn't believe how bad she was :D

But telling someone is out of tune, or playing the wrong notes, isn't really anything to do with perfect pitch.

Nigel, I hate the sounds from bagpipes. Maybe because they are always played too loud at full volume and the drone reed plays continuously. The sounds are too shrill and are nasal.

I don't think bagpipes have volume controls :D

I can't say I'm very keen on them either.

I wonder why Scottish guys wear a skirt?

I've always wondered - but of course trousers are relatively 'modern' inventions.

My daughters boyfriend, who is Indonesian Dutch, also wears a kilt etc. when he performs in his bagpipe troupe.
 
But telling someone is out of tune, or playing the wrong notes, isn't really anything to do with perfect pitch.
Then what do you call it when I can hear that a singer cannot reach the high notes and I hear those high notes as being "flat"?
Or what do you call it when I can hear that a guitar string is a little out of tune with the other strings?

Instruments or singers all playing or singing together are different because then if one or more are a little out of tune then we hear beat modulation.
 
Then what do you call it when I can hear that a singer cannot reach the high notes and I hear those high notes as being "flat"?
Or what do you call it when I can hear that a guitar string is a little out of tune with the other strings?

Sounding (or playing) flat is blindingly obvious - and nothing to do with 'perfect pitch'.

Perfect pitch is when you can tell if an instrument isn't tuned accurately - so the notes are all in correct proportion (so it sounds perfectly fine), but is actually 'wrong'. For example middle C should be 261.6Hz, and if middle C was tuned to be 250Hz (and all the other notes tuned to that) the instrument would sound perfectly OK, but someone with perfect pitch would be able to tell it was wrong.

So can you get hold of a guitar, and accurately tune it with no external tuning aids? - as (I presume?) you know you tune the strings by beating them against each other, but you have to accurately tune the initial string first - that's what 'perfect pitch' allows you to do.
 
I do not have perfect pitch but I have something similar, maybe it can be called "almost perfect pitch".
When I hear a song played in a different key than what I am used to hearing then it does not sound "OK", instead it sounds "wrong". My brain senses that something is different to the song in my memory but cannot accurately say what is wrong with it.
Music composers do not randomly select the key for their masterpiece. There must be a reason for their selection of a certain key.

55 years ago I had a similar discussion with my music teacher but I can't remember the details. Today I looked in Google at "the selection of a key for music" and it got too deep when they used many words I never heard before.

I looked up "middle C" in Google and found a video of a piano playing it. Listen to the modulation beats (caused by poor tuning?):

I found another video on You Tube about "How to Find The Key of a Song". It said to simply HUM its tonic note which I did and I was correct!
 
I never "learned" relative pitch, I think I was born with it. I can hear a song then I can sing, hum, whistle or play an instrument of that song in any key.
But some people are not musical at all. We have all heard these people singing Happy Birthday or Jingle Bells completely out of tune.

Some professional singers cannot sing worth a damn in tune. They use a digital gadget to correct their pitch like the 'Cher effect' in her song "Believe".
These singers used to record a song many times then correct pitch parts were spliced together.
 
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