Machine translation

As a qualified translator, I often get asked about machine translation as an alternative to the human-processed variety, particularly in the context of multi-lingual websites and localisation. Questioners rarely seem to believe that translation programs - widely for sale for some years - are still incapable of rendering sensible text on most occasions, let alone something stylistically acceptable or (dare I say) polished. The often questionable claims of vendors are accepted much more readily.

The last couple of days have seen a few of articles in the mainstream press covering the subject of online translation programs. The Times carries a review of, and The Guardian an extract from, Umberto Eco's latest book, Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation.

Eco: "Let us suppose that in a novel a character says, 'You're just pulling my leg.' To render such an idiom in Italian by 'stai solo tirandomi la gamba' or 'tu stai menandomi per la gamba' would be literally correct but misleading. In Italian, one should say 'mi stai prendendo per il naso', thus substituting an English leg with an Italian nose.

"If literally translated, the English expression, absolutely unusual in Italian, would make the reader suppose that the character (as well as the author) was inventing a provocative rhetorical figure - which is completely misleading, as in English the expression is simply an idiom. By choosing 'nose' instead of 'leg', a translator puts the Italian reader in the same situation as the original English one."

Eco also discusses using the online translation tool Babelfish: when trying to translate certain English expressions into Italian and German, "'The works of Shakespeare' become 'Gli impianti di Shakespeare' (The plants of Shakespeare). 'Speaker of the chamber of deputies' becomes 'Altoparlante dell’alloggiamento dei delegati' (Loudspeaker of the lodging of the delegates), and 'Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce' becomes 'Studien in der Logik der Charlessandpapierschleifmaschinen Peirce' (Studies in the logic of the Charles of sandpaper grinding machines Peirce).'

Unfortunately, programs cannot handle idiom, proper nouns, and the non-shared nature of sematic space across languages, never mind words with multiple meanings (that's most of them), prepositions (which rarely share semantic space), geographical language variation across a single language, the use of multiple languages in a single text (surprisingly common), or context. As Eco demonstrates, backtranslations (translations back into the original language) are a good way of finding out just how bad such 'translations' are.

There's further coverage of the subject in today's Guardian G2, where the Shortcuts section carries a piece (Lost in Translation) on the failings of yet another online translation program to deliver the goods. The subject is Italian press coverage of the current British royals saga (which cannot be openly discussed in the British press without fear of a libel prosecution).

"Of course, it won't read like a page of Hazlitt," says The Guardian, "but you'll get the gist of the story. That's the theory, at least; but in practice - as many have discovered this week - the translations are so eccentric as to be virtually incomprehensible."

La Repubblica's coverage of the British affair is summarised thus: "The problem seems to have originated in a literary disagreement of some sort, as my translation claims it involves a servant who was seen 'to read with a limb of the real house'. Prince Charles denied any literary wrongdoing in a statement issued last week that seems to have been drafted by a member of Blazing Squad: 'I want to affirm clear and round that the chats check me, but I am entirely fake,' he said. Unfortunately, this rebuttal backfired on the prince, and served only 'to tickle the caution around the event'. But La Repubblica is careful not to overstate the damage caused by this as yet undefined literary transgression. 'It will be not true that it the monarchy is about to fall,' it reassures us, 'but, with the future king compelled it deny to go read, the crown does not seem to enjoy of excellent health.'"

Traduttore, Traditore.