Google Translate

[mearrin69]

I'm not a native speaker but I can't see what's wrong with mei gui cheng. I'd have gone with mei gui shi, but it sounds okay to me. What should it have been?
M

[TBF]

as su_liam mentioned, it is just an example. I have seen several translations from english texts into german texts by the google translator and the results were horrible. Really.
In the most cases it will translate you single words right (well, in most cases), but groups and sentences often do not make any sence.

[Andartar]

I have the same experiences as TBF, being a native speaker of Swedish, I sometimes run some texts through Google translate (Swedish -> English) to see what I end up with and the results are comprehensible at best. Usually the vocabulary used isn't what a native speaker would use. But as a way to come up with fanciful pseudo-[random language] names I think it's perfect. Tolkien did the same with the names used by the Rohirrim in the LOTR. He took Old English words and adjusted them until they sounded "right". Being an imagined world sort of removes the need for absolute correct grammatics and such.

[Cèsar de Quart]

I have the same experiences as TBF, being a native speaker of Swedish, I sometimes run some texts through Google translate (Swedish -> English) to see what I end up with and the results are comprehensible at best. Usually the vocabulary used isn't what a native speaker would use. But as a way to come up with fanciful pseudo-[random language] names I think it's perfect. Tolkien did the same with the names used by the Rohirrim in the LOTR. He took Old English words and adjusted them until they sounded "right". Being an imagined world sort of removes the need for absolute correct grammatics and such.

Yes, I prefer this option too. As I said in the "how do you name your world" thread, I'd better use existing languages in the Middle Ages rather than inventing some. Even though I had to make up an Elvish language, which is spoken by a third of my contintent's inhabitants, I based its phonetics and grammar highly in Greek, because I thought that Greek's ability to express metaphorical and abstract concepts fit better into Elvish nature, while the humans who decided not to accept commercial treaties with the Elves spoke Latin. 1400 years later, they still speak a quite pure form of Elvish, while the other half of the continent speaks either a Romanesque language (mainly Occitan, Medieval Spanish, Francian, Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin), a Celtic tongue (Welsh, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic and Irish) or a Germanic language (Old English, Gothic, Old Norse, Middle Saxon (which today is Low German), Middle Bavarian (which today is High German) and some other minor languages).

I had to make up some other languages, but not really from scrathc, but from another language. For example: Erlish is actually Gothic evolved to adapt Basque phonetics and some of its grammar and vocabulary, because a rogue Germanic people assented in an area inhabited by sort-of-Basques. Those Basques made the Latin in the shouth evolve into Spanish (Spanish was caused by the influence of Basque into Latin, historically) and, in the north, they contacted with those Goths. I had to recreate their language evolution. Kind of funny, actually.

Take care!