[TopAce]

I don't know how I should feel after my most recent experience:

A few days ago, I filled an English test on the website of one of the Hungarian exam centers. I chose the most difficult test and filled it to evaluate my knowledge. My choice was obvious, since I am preparing for Advanced level.
This test consisted of two parts: Translating Hungarian words into English, and translating Hungarian sentences into English.
They told they would respond in a few days. They did.
The test was APPARENTLY checked by some kind of computer brain, because 90% of my mistakes were that I used capital letters in the first letter of a word. So all the 19 of the 20 words they asked from me were incorrect because of this. Exceptions were verbs, which I did not write with capital letters because of the 'to'. The only word they considered correct was the 'to imagine'. In addition, they did not accept 'to defend', they stated the correct answer would have been 'to protect'. Is there a difference at all? . An other verb was 'to announce', which was 'to report in' for me, because the same Hungarian word is to be used for both.
Translating Hungarian sentences into English wasn't different. They did not accept any of the sentences because I did not wrote dots to the end of the sentences.
So, this complete idiot computer checker said that my performance was 4%.
There were some other minor mistakes, too, for example I wrote 'lawyer' instead of 'lawyer of defence', and I wrote: 'I hardly could make myself understood' instead of 'I could hardly make myself understood.'. I don't know how serious mistakes these are.

Should I laugh and ignore it, or should I be disappointed?
I feel completely indifferent now.

[kasperl]

Not sure. The missing periods are indeed spelling errors, it's like forgetting units of measurements at a physics test (got me a 7/10 instead of a 10/10 once...) The cap thing is indeed stupid, and can be changed easily in any software.

[aldo_14]

I find it bizarre that a word-checking program wouldn't just discard case sensitivity.

[TopAce]

By the way: Is the 'I hardly could make myself understood' completely incorrect?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TopAce
In addition, they did not accept 'to defend', they stated the correct answer would have been 'to protect'. Is there a difference at all? . An other verb was 'to announce', which was 'to report in' for me, because the same Hungarian word is to be used for both.

Depends on how you used them. If you said that you painted your house to defend it from the rain you're wrong.

The difference between announce and report is also quite large in most situations.

[TopAce]

But the same Hungarian word is used for 'to report' and 'to announce'. I had no clue what the writer of the test wanted.
Same is true for 'to defend' and 'to protect'.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by TopAce
But the same Hungarian word is used for 'to report' and 'to announce'. I had no clue what the writer of the test wanted.

Ah...linguistic ambiguity.  This is why computers can't properly do translation....

Maybe the context it was used within?

[TopAce]

It was in the first part of the test. So I only had to translate a single word. It was not used in a sentence.

[Carl]

I'm taking an algebra course where computers grade us. there are problems. the answer to one problem was -2 and -1. i wrote -2 -1 as the answer. the computer counted it as incorrect because there was a space between the two numbers. it would only accept -2-1

[TopAce]

What calms me down is that a real exam is checked by a human teacher.

[vyper]

Computer based exams rawk. I passed 1st year Uni maths on based on their repetitive nature.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]There's the famous example:

Fruit flies like a banana.

This sentance is fairly straightforward in construction but it has two rather wildly different meanings depending on how you choose to interpret it. The sentance either states that the insects; 'fruit flies', are partial to the odd banana, or that fruit in general has the same aerodynamic properties as a banana.

This is why you don't code in english.

I have to admit though that whilst I am not particularly learned in english (I rarely read poetry or the so called 'classics') I really am in awe of how flexable the language is.
Still nothing is as flexable as f**k, to fully emphasise that I advise you to fire up whatever p2p gear you have installed and search for a track called 'the meaning of the word'.
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