Machine translation can do impressive things, as I’ve noted before. However, there are some things humans do easily that would be very difficult (perhaps impossible) to build into MT programs. I’m part of an ongoing machine translation post editing job for a client who needs to translate large amounts of customer feedback coming in every… Continue reading Easy for humans, hard for computers
Month: April 2018
More Trumpian back-translation
This Süddeutsche Zeitung article (entitled “The Germans are bad, very bad”) with a collection of Trump’s statements about Merkel – translated into German, of course – made me want to try another back-translation exercise. I picked just one of the many quotes, a longer one that demonstrates the editing/cleanup process his statements often undergo on… Continue reading More Trumpian back-translation
Two songs
On Sunday I volunteered to sit in a basement for several hours doing very little. I forgot to bring something to read so I jotted down a couple of Lieder and had a go at translating them. The results, after some fine tuning at home, are below. Both of these could be improved – if… Continue reading Two songs
Ask your doctor if the blood of a virgin is right for you!
A summary of the medieval story Der arme Heinrich by Hartmann von Aue. If you enjoyed the now-defunct website The Toast, you might like this too. If not…I have other posts. Go here if you’ve never seen an American pharmaceutical ad. Are you covered in disgusting sores? Losing fingers and toes? Suffering from gangrene and blindness?… Continue reading Ask your doctor if the blood of a virgin is right for you!
On the German standard of living (ca. 1960)
As a graduate student, my mother had to take some German and her textbook was Deutsch für Amerikaner by C.R. Goedsche and Meno Spann, published in 1960. I’ve been leafing through it off and on. This week’s fiction in The New Yorker is all about people trying to express themselves in an intermediate German class,… Continue reading On the German standard of living (ca. 1960)