CultureBridge: machine translation

F E A T U R E A R T I C L E
On-line translation: friend or foe?

If you've ever been tempted by software that translates your text into another language, BEWARE! All languages are constantly evolving, creating thousands of new words and catch phrases as well as unique grammatical nuances that do not follow any conventional rules. Unfortunately, the algorithms that control software translation are years away from correctly interpreting all the tricky nuances within a language. These misinterpretations can confuse the on-line translators and produce inaccurate results.

Take, for instance, idioms in the English language. An idiom is a phrase that has a definition other than its literal meaning. Without idioms in a dialogue or in a text that is supposed to be written with a personal tone (such as an admissions essay), the wording will sound stilted. Idioms rarely translate well into other languages. Submitting a work with idioms to an on-line translator can produce some humorous wordings, but if used as a reliable source, the outcome can be disastrous. Students studying other languages have tried to write their assignments first in their own language and then use an on-line program to perform the translation. Of course teachers know right away that type of work is not original. Be even more careful on a critical writing such as an admissions essay. Committees will know if you try to "pull the wool over their eyes", or according to one translation site, when asked to translate into French and back into English, "draw wools above theirs eyes". You certainly don't want to sound that ridiculous in a text that should demonstrate your written knowledge of their native language!

To test the accuracy of the on-line translators, we submitted an English phrase that might be included in a typical "How I got over a personal challenge" essay on a college admissions essay. Here are the disastrous results:

ORIGINAL ENGLISH
I bit off more than I could chew when I took on the project, but I kept my nose to the grindstone and completed it.

TRANSLATED TO GERMAN AND RETRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH I bit away from more, than I could chew, than I took on the project, but I held my Wekzeugspritze to the whet-stone and it executed.

TRANSLATED TO SPANISH AND RETRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH I bit more than it could chew when I acquired the project, but I kept my nose to the tooth and I finished it.

Read on for translations of a typical spoken phrase:

ORIGINAL ENGLISH
I was so pooped that I fell asleep in class. Was my face red!

TRANSLATED TO GERMAN AND RETRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH I was, thus pooped that I fell sleeping in the category. My face was red!

TRANSLATED TO SPANISH AND RETRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH He was so pooped that I fell slept in class. He was my red one of the face!

What machine translation can be useful for: rough translations for your personal information, such as to find out if a particular foreign language web site or text is helpful enough to warrant further translation.

Remember, nothing can replace study and practice to learn a foreign language!

By Susan Ernenwein and Alice Hoover

Click here for more articles about study and travel abroad!

Oops!!!

Not paying careful attention to the literal meaning of your foreign language translation can get you in big trouble. Some companies are famous for their bad translations.

Take the car manufacturer, Chevy, for example. The name of their car, the Nova, literally means, "no go", in Spanish. Not a good name if you're trying to sell cars to Spanish-speaking buyers!

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