(26.02.2010, 10:02)fuji schrieb: > hole: The wormholes are alternately entered and exited (without re-entering). After the second of each pair, cells are encountered normally.
This description is wonderful. Very clear and helpful. There is no words alternately in the original Japanese rules.
When I read the Japanese rules of wormholes, I couldn't understand the rules.
I am glad to hear that I am not alone.
Even speakers (readers) of Japanese can have trouble with this one. This was one of the hardest ones for me to understand. It may literally have taken me several years to understand this. Neither Google nor Babblefish translation made this understandable when I first looked in 2005. Looking things up in Kanji and regular Japanese-English dictionaries did not help, although it did give me the likely word "warp". Returning to this every several months, I finally had an "Aha!" moment. (the Google translation had not really changed during that time)
This does bring up an interesting question. What makes a good or effective translation? You commented on my explanatory description, not my actual "translation". Strictly speaking, I can't give translations as I have no knowledge of Japanese, although I can use some Japanese/English dictionaries and Google Translation. In what I have been presenting as translations I have usually been trying to mimic the structure of the original rules, or at least what automatic translation suggests that the structure is. This has been done to show that my translation has a reasonable chance of being correct since it has similarity to an auto-translation. (Although my auto-translated reference may no longer be reproducible) The only reason I gave the second version that you referred to was to have a better chance of answering berni's question when I couldn't figure out what his question was. (in auto-translation from German)
Of course, mimicking the original structure may make the translated version harder to understand, especially when trying to refer to three or more different concepts in a single sentence. Sometimes when I have noticed this, I have instead broken a sentence up into multiple simple sentences.
I have also erred on the side of being very verbose, sometimes almost spelling things out. I know that many people may only read automatic translations of my post. In understanding automatic translations, sometimes all I really have needed to know is a single word, as well as a general sense of what some of the other words might be. Case in point: I have seen translations from both Japanese and German where the automatic translation omits the most important word, some variant of "not", thus changing the whole meaning of a piece of text. By providing more words, I hope that a meaningful word gets through translation, and that I don't rely on a shade-of-meaning of a word that might get lost in translation. Another reason for verboseness is to try to avoid pronouns that might appear to refer to something unintended after auto-translation.
Perhaps a more effective translation would be one that first mimics the original to show that it is applicable, then provide an alternate description based on the concepts alone, not a translation.
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For the curious, here is how the Google translation for hole.html/.pdf has changed over time. (I don't think there is any difference between the original .html and .pdf) It is bad enough in English, I have no idea what will happen if it is re-translated into something else.
This example also demonstrates that automatic translation changes over time and can either improve or get worse.
Rule 1 is better in the old version.
Rule 2 is about the same, although neither is particularly good. (but both seem to indicate crossing the board and counting or increasing)
Rule 3 is quite a bit better in the new version, both in meaning and sentence structure.
(Note: a square on the board often translates as "mass".)
[.pdf, saved in a file dated April 23, 2005]
hole.pdf Worm hole - rule 1: " The hole " is arranged in several masses of the board surface. 2: Until the number outside advances, entering into the board surface from the position, straight goes outside again the number of masses which are passed is displayed. 3: When there is a hole in the mass which it moved, if there is no that first other hole, from there the loom it does outside. So, if is not, throwing the mass between, the loom it does in the following hole, usually moves again.
[.html, current]
Wormhole
Rule 1: The mass of the board of several "holes" in the place.
2: number of outside, go straight into the board from its position, represents the number of squares until you pass out again.
3: If there are hole in the mass moved to warp out from there if there is no other holes in the road.
Skip to warp to the next hole between the mass of otherwise normal to move again.
![[Bild: wormhole-001.gif?t=1267174842]](http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af145/pasocomshoshinsha/Naoki-Project/wormhole-001.gif?t=1267174842)
![[Bild: book_100305.jpg]](http://puzzle.gr.jp/kahua/kahua-web/works/book_100305.jpg)
