Quoting Jonathan McDowell <jcm@head.cfa.harvard.edu>: > By the way, babelfish translates the names of the satellites as: > "radar 2 the machine" > and > "optics 3 the machine actual proof satellite" > > Any Japanese speakers able to provide a better translation? I > infer the O-3 name is really something like "Optical-3 Flight > Prototype"... > Are you referring to this site: http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/02/20070224_h2a-f12_j.html for your input to bable-fish? I went to the English version page but it looks like they still need to get a translator to translate all the latest Press Releases, since the latest Release on the English page was dated back to Feb 13. The title of the Press Release: H-IIAロケット12号機による情報収集衛星2機 （レーダ2号機および光学3号機実証衛星）の打上げ結果について can be roughly translated into: On the Results of the lauch of 2(machine/unit) Information Gathering Satellites (Radar Number 2 [machine] and Optical Number 3 [machine] Verification Satellites) using H-IIA Rocket number 12 [machine]. The appearance of the word [machine] in the translation came from the fact that the word 'ki' or 'machine' in Japanese also acts as a 'unit' for any machinery, and they can be removed without any impact to the translation. For example, an airplane is a flying machine (hi-koki) in Japanese. 160- airplane is translated to 160-ki or 160-machine in Japanese. I think that was the source of confusion to any of the automatic translation software such as bable-fish or Systran. In addition to that, there is no plural form in Japanese or in other Asian languages such as in my native tongue. The original title in Japanese shows that both R-2 and O-3 are the prototypes or the verification satellites, but the translator only picked up and attached the attribute to 0-3 to give you "optics 3 the machine actual proof satellite" while the 'proof of principle satellite(s)' here actually referred to both R-2 and O-3. BTW, neither English nor Japanese are my mother tongue. I hope this explanation don't confuse you more. :-) Aris Tanone http://mysattrack.net/?p=59 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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