ศาลาชุมนุม

[Naga]

Translating to be willing to via translation programs and getting different translation based on the gender of the subject.
Examples:
Mary is willing to be my teacher. แมรี่เต็มใจที่จะเป็นครูของฉัน
She is willing to be my teacher. เธอเต็มใจที่จะเป็นครูของฉัน

Robert is willing to be my teacher. โรเบิร์ตยินดีเป็นครูของฉัน
He is willing to be my teacher. เขายินดีที่จะเป็นครูของฉัน


Mary or she translates to เต็มใจ which from what I can tell is the closest match to the English phrase to be willing.
Robert or he translates to ยินดี which is more like to be happy (to).

Is there actually a difference based on the gender of the subject?
Or is this just a translation program anomaly although I've run this through two different translation programs.

Is there a best translation for the phrase to be willing to?

[David and Bui]

Wikipedia describes the two types of machine translation:

"Statistical machine translation (SMT) is a machine translation paradigm where translations are generated on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived from the analysis of bilingual text corpora. The statistical approach contrasts with the rule-based approaches to machine translation as well as with example-based machine translation."

The first method uses sets of bilingual texts. When someone looks to translate a sentence using Google Translate, for example, it looks to see if it has comparable sentences in its "corpus". The Thai-English corpus is smaller than that of German-English or French-English or any other major European language.

I am speculating here, but I suspect that phrase "เต็มใจ" was found in a sentence with a female subject, where as "ยินดี" was in a sentence with a male protagonist. To my knowledge neither Thai phrase is gender specific.

I do think that there is a difference in meaning between the two. "เต็มใจ" is defined by the RID as "มีนํ้าใจไม่บกพร่อง, มีใจสมัครด้วยยินดี, ไม่มีข้ออิดเอื้อนหรือขัดแย้ง" [is completely willing without reservation; is fully happy to do something; wants to do something without reluctance or disagreement]. "ยินดี" from the RID is "ชอบใจ, ดีใจ". I believe this means is happy to do something, but not as strongly as without any reservation or reluctance.

What do you think?

[theoldman]

Hi Naga,

I don't think there is the gender of the subject in this case. Translation programs were incorrect, as usual. That's all.

ยินดี = be delighted, be pleased, be happy to, be glad (to do)
เต็มใจ = wholehearted, completely and sincerely devoted (to do)

I agree with David. เต็มใจ has a bit more willing to do than ยินดี. I might be glad to do something (ยินดี). I might or might not do it wholeheartedly. Besides, ยินดี could mean just a polite manner to show others or to tell yourself, if not a fake one.
If it were me, I would translate "to be willing to" as เต็มใจ. Two reasons: 1. Will has something to do with heart (ใจ) in Thai. 2. Be wholehearted literally means "full of heart" (full=เต็ม; heart=ใจ). Hence เต็มใจ or (my whole heart is willing to do).