Welcome to my latest article in this series. Please see here for the previous one.
This month I want to talk about an issue that I am coming across more and more frequently of late, that of machine translation (MT).
The first thing I need to stress is that clients who come to Gengo do so because they want an accurate human translation. If they wanted to use MT, they could save themselves money and do it themselves. What they do want is the security of knowing that the translation is correct and sounds as natural as possible. Simply put, they don’t trust MT to do that for them, so your job is to ensure they get what they need.
Having said that, although in the past MT was, often laughably, unreliable, it has come on in leaps and bounds and can sometimes even be quite good. If, however, I come across a test that has been completed using unedited or poorly edited MT I will fail it. Even if it is accurate. Why? Because that test does not show me whether the person who carried it out is familiar with either English or German, or, if they are, can actually produce a good translation; merely that they know how to copy and paste a machine translation.
Am I, then, saying that MT should be avoided at all costs? Actually, no. What I am saying is that it can be a useful tool, in the same way that a dictionary is, but to use it properly you need to know your source language (German) very well, and to have native language level in your target language (English). If you don’t, you are in no position to be able to assess how good, or how bad, MT is. In the same way that if you use a dictionary you need to know which option is most appropriate in the context you need it. For example, if you come across this word in a text:
Feder
do you know which of the several definitions given is correct?
If the text is technical, the translation is quite possibly
spring.
But if it is about writing, it could be
pen or quill,
while if it is about birds it will undoubtedly be
feather.
MT would probably sort this one out if you enter a sentence or a paragraph, but if an entire phrase or sentence is ambiguous, it tends not to. Especially when it comes to colloquialisms, metaphors and the like. Some years ago, I came across a phrase for the first time, as part of a Gengo translation. This was:
Ich bin zu nah am Wasser gebaut
Put this through MT as I have just done and the result is the literal translation:
I am built too close to the water.
Really? Is this correct? No. However, if you don’t know what it means, Google is definitely your friend here. The phrase means
I cry too easily/I am over-emotional.
If you can’t find an answer in Google, and you have nobody to ask, the worst thing to do is to enter the MT blindly and hope for the best.
Another example I came across very recently when checking a Gengo translation was:
So beißt sich der Hund immer wieder in den Schwanz.
The translation was:
So the dog keeps biting its tail.
This was not identical to the MT, but very close. It did not fit in the text at all, which had nothing to do with dogs. As a native-level English speaker with a good command of German, you should be able to recognise that this is a phrase that does not translate literally into English and, if you aren’t already familiar with it, know that you need to work it out. In this case, if you Google the phrase, all you get is references to dogs actually biting their tails. Dig a little deeper, and you will find that there is a German phrase:
da beißt sich die Katze in den Schwanz
which fits perfectly into the context of this text, which refers to a recurring problem – the speaker
keeps going round in circles.
So someone got a common German phrase a bit mixed up, but the intended meaning can be worked out with a couple of minutes’ effort. Since the explanation produced by Google is in German, once again you need to understand the German to get the reference.
Of course, not all the translations you do have such extreme examples as these, but overall MT, while sometimes good
- is not always reliable
- often fails to spot errors
- often cannot translate creative texts well
- gets less reliable the more complicated or more colloquial the text gets and
- needs checking thoroughly every single time
So what is my point? Am I saying that MT should be avoided completely? No, not entirely (unless you are taking a test to become a Gengo translator – I do check, and when I see exactly the same translation time and again, I know when MT has been used). My point is that MT can be a useful tool, especially if you are getting bogged down with complicated German that needs unravelling. But this assumes that your understanding of German is good enough to understand the original, to know whether it contains errors, and to work out what errors (typos etc.) should actually be, while at the same time your native-level English will allow you to know whether the translation is not just accurate but also sounds good. And to use the appropriate tone – formal/informal, creative/factual etc. Ideally, even if you do resort to MT to help you, the final translation you deliver will bear your own original touch and will not look like MT.
The bottom line is that if you use a combination of all the tools available to you, your own linguistic skills and a liberal dose of common sense, you will have a satisfied client.
As ever, I have used real examples, and any errors come from the texts I used!
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