I am in Brazil and use the google translate service on an almost daily basis. I had a very sexy boy with me this week and he speaks not a word of English and I not a word of Portuguese. So we use this to communicate at times. Not that talking is so important. Anyway, I noticed they have added Thai as one of their translation languages. That will make communication so much easier with some of my special friends there.

 

BTW: the boy with me is 23, tight six pack, blond hair and brown eyes. Looks like he stepped off of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. Brazil is amazing this time of year as Carnival is approaching and all the guys from across the country come here to work in the saunas and the beaches are jam packed every day with eye candy galore. Still missing Thailand though but trying to make the best of things here.

 

http://translate.google.com/

Being somewhat computer illiterate how do you take the translation and put it in an email?

Thanks for the heads up GT!

 

Is there a way that I can type Thai letters with my qwerty keybord?

You can copy and paste the letter and then put it into your e-mail.

 

If you want to use Thai letters you can do that too. but, you need a Thai keyboard. The BF had one and they are all over Tuk com.

You can copy and paste the letter and then put it into your e-mail.

 

Yes, I did figure that out and it worked with Mozilla but did not seem to work with Chrome.

Anyway I did use it and will see how the lads respond. One limitation was that each "translation" was limited to 300 characters. I suppose it would be feasible to do multiple translations, copy and paste each one. Thanks for the tip.

 

I did try to translate my name "laurence" to Thai. It came out as laurence! I also translated my nick name and it did translate to Thai characters but not anywhere near the same as I have learned it in Thai.

"also translated my nick name and it did translate to Thai characters but not anywhere near the same as I have learned it in Thai."

 

Lurker, I am not sure how literate you are in Thai, but what they are doing is phoneticizing your name into the Thai language which often has many different letters for the same English sound.

 

I believe their are more than 6 letters for the T sound. 2 for L, not to mention Thai difficulty with the R sound.

Gt...that's extremely helpful of you to mention this site. It seems so much easier and more effective than other Thai translations sites.

 

As with most translation sites, they are not perfect and the easiest way to check the accuracy (rather than wait for your boyfriend to come back with some angry retort [after "I want to screw you" came out as I want to nail you to a tree and smash your head in]) is to copy and paste the translated sentence back into the input box and "swap" the languages and translate again and you will be pleasantly surprised or flabbergasted.

For example Aunt ends up as Uncle in Thai....that may be of little importance but for me it was a minor disaster when I sent a text to my Thai "aunt" concerning the recent death of her husband...the uncle!

But fair play to it, it gets penis spot on but thinks masturbate should be "fly"...I was expecting "fly a kite".

I tried translating some English into European languages, "What is you name"? and all ok for French, Spanish and German but the Italian came out as "Whatsa youra name".

 

I also tried the tip by jtrack33 and got some funny results when going from English to Thai to English.

Another useful aspect of the site is that you are able to "copy" the text and paste it into Skype's SMS function and then message your boy with something sensitive that you don't really want to ask someone else to translate for you. Using Skype for texting is very good in my opinion. It is cheaper or as cheap as normal DTAC/AIS rates and you are able to use a keyboard to create the text. You also get confirmation of receipt. Although the textee cannot reply directly to Skype, a message goes with the Skype text showing a phone number you designate.

For example Aunt ends up as Uncle in Thai....that may be of little importance but for me it was a minor disaster when I sent a text to my Thai "aunt" concerning the recent death of her husband...the uncle!

But fair play to it, it gets penis spot on but thinks masturbate should be "fly"...I was expecting "fly a kite".

 

And when using "I" it seems to always use "chan" which I think can be used for either sex but tends to be more female with "pom" being masculine".

 

As far as flying a kite, my tutor and I came across "chagwow" in one of my lessons and we had a good laugh.

 

It seems after I pasted the Thai text into my emails and sent them, they were received as a series of question marks???????

At least that is what my "sent" fold contains and also what I received back from Thailand when they replied to my emails.

So far no one is Thailand has commented about my Thai emails.

It seems after I pasted the Thai text into my emails and sent them, they were received as a series of question marks???????

I think that problem can be solved if you get those people to download and install Thai fonts. The most commonly used Thai font is 'Angsana New.' If they already have it, then maybe they need to do something to activate it.

 

Most Email programs have some sort of a 'settings' feature. I use Gmail. My settings default for display language is US English. It does have a selection choice to set the display language to Thai. Maybe that's what your recipients need to do.

 

Another solution is to write your Email on a word processor first, convert it to a PDF format, and attach the file to the Email. Then they should be able to see the Thai lettering.

If you want to use Thai letters you can do that too. but, you need a Thai keyboard. The BF had one and they are all over Tuk com.

 

Along with the keyboard (which just shows you where the Thai characters are), you will need to install support for Asian languages in Windows. In XP, it's in the Control Panel under "Regional and Language Preferences".

 

Once Thai is installed, there will be a language bar on your taskbar that will allow you to switch between English and Thai.

What I have found is that you need to use this program in Thai speak. What I mean is that the way I talk to a Thai with short words and phrases will translate very well. When I try to speak English the way I do with my family the translation is poor. But, when I speak the way I do with many Thais the translation comes out pretty close.