Taglish or Tagalog-English Texts in Google Translator
Filipinos are fond of using Taglish in their everyday conversation. Taglish means the term that describes how English words are incorporated in Tagalog sentences. I have here below an example of a Taglish text:
Ang dami na namang tao sa Mall ngayon. Christmas na kasi. Ano kaya gift ng boyfriend ko sa akin? Baka wala naman. Well, I don’t care kung wala siyang gift basta I am with him sa 25.
Translation:
There’s a lot of people in the malls again. Well, because it’s already Christmas. I wonder what present my boyfriend will give to me? I think he won’t really give any. Well, I don’t care if he will not as long as I am with him on the 25th.
And since Filipinos love Taglish and love texting, it is not surprising to read Filipino text messages in Taglish. However, a new form of Taglish evolved from texting because of the limited characters per text message. An example of this Taglish form in SMS is: Wer na u? D2 n me! (Where are you? I am already here!)
Amazingly, Google Translator unknowingly gives SMS Taglish form of translation to some of the Filipino-English queries. I discovered this when I was testing the tool, and when I saw the Taglish results, it inspired me to write this article.
I only found few Tagalog sentences with SMS Taglish translations. I picked out those sentences with translations that also made sense; and they are on the table below.
| Original Text | Google Translate | Correct Translation |
| Gigising me bukas ng maaga. | Gigising me early tomorrow. | I will wake-up early tomorrow. |
| Nasaan ka? | Where you? | Where are you? |
| Ano ang almusal bukas? | What breakfast tomorrow? | What is for breakfast tomorrow? |
| Saan kayo magkikita? | Where you magkikita? | Where are you going to meet? |
| Nasa Manila ka ba? | In Manila you? | Are you in Manila? |
| Dito magikikita. | Here magkikita. | This is the meeting place. |
| Pagisipan mo ng maraming beses. | Pagisipan you many times. | Think about it a lot of times. |
When I was doing this translating activity, I noticed that Google translator could actually give out perfect translations for a sentence or a phrase, but paragraphs could yield poor translations. So, for poorly translated texts or incorrect translations I quickly suggested to Google better translations. There’s a link to do that on Google Translate page. Once you click, a box will appear where you can type in the correct translation.
If you try those sentences I listed above in the near future, you may not see the Google Translate results I got from the day I used it.
This is very good. I think translation is bad because people shoud speak english. speaking is good because everyone know it for business. I learn English and they tech me lots of things. You have made a very interested site so far. I look forward to reading and learning more.
Maya Rasheed
January 14, 2009 at 8:45 pm
[...] Google Translator is using the Google Translate service. You can also manually ask Google to translate a web site, or a text by going directly to [...]
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July 20, 2009 at 12:02 pm
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acky
August 22, 2009 at 8:40 am
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trialgenelyn
September 24, 2009 at 2:42 pm