What Language Is This?

Looks German to me.

Looks German to me too.

What do hold the inhabitants of Dresden of the bus and road rate rises?

From the 1st November, 2003 the traffic group Oberelbe (VVO) raises the prices of bus and road journeys to on an average five percent and this is rather different for the single rates. What do you hold from this measure which is founded with rising energy prices?

Yep it's German. Got this using free translation online. http://translation2.paralink.com/

Yes, it definitely is German, and the translation is quite good, but there are naturally a few mistranslations/differences between the languages; as you can probably guess, 'halten' is referring to holding opinions rather than holding physically. I'd roughly translate it into English as: "what do the people of Dresden think about the rises in bus and road rates. From 1st November, 2003, the traffic group Oberelbe is raising the price of bus and road journeys by an average of 5%, and the single rates are another matter. What do you think about this measure, which is justified by rising energy prices?"

Correct, dròm_et_rêve! :wink:
Perhaps, a slightly different translation would give the last sentence a meaning, which was originally intended: "What do you think about this measure, which they [the company] justify by rising energy prices?"

It lokks like the introducing part of a newspaper poll (actually it's from the Dresden online town-magazine, I just found out ).

I almost forwarded this straight to you when I saw it Walter. Then I thought I'd check out the online translation engines first.

Whcih actually didn't work that bad, Wilso!

Yeah, I was surprised. They seem to be getting better.

Thank you for verifying that, Walter... I knew that 'they' justified it with rising energy prices, but I translated it using the passive, which I perhaps should not have done. Electronic translators, it seems, are becoming better at translating a source language into English, but I still would never trust one to translate from English into another target language. I myself am trying to create an English-French-Spanish three way translator that combats the screaming problems in grammar that afflict most electronic translators. The key to this is creating a two-fold lexis: the translator translates full phrases that it recognises first, and then words, which combats the problem of translating English idioms directly to English. For example, in English we would say 'he treats her like a doormat'. The average translator would translate as this: 'él la trata como un doormat' which doesn't make sense or 'como un felpudo', which doesn't make sense to the Spanish speaker either. My translator would have a list of all the possible conjugations of to treat like a doormat- 'tratar como a un esclava/pisotea': (literally, to treat like to a bracelet/bangle or stamping) and so would come up with 'le trata como a un esclava/pisotea.' For this to work, you need about one hundred endings for each idiom, so it will take about four years before it can be sold/put on the internet.

Thank you all.
I'd like to read all replies carefully.

I've been using those free translation sites myself -- and while you occasionally get rather garbled translations -- you usually can make out what is being said.

Hooray for the Internet.

If you're bored, try writing something in English, using an online translator to translate it into a few different foreign languages, and then bring it back to English. It's like the old "telephone" game--what you get back is very rarely what you put in and can sometimes be quite amusing.

French

Wellcome, waynewan, to a2K and on this thread!

I really can assure that people in Dresden speak and write German (although the Saxonian dialect might sometimes indicate something different [but even that doesn't sound like French :wink: ]).