Category: Machine translation

While cleaning out a desk drawer I found these amusing machine translation errors I’d noted down months ago. So here they are (sorry about the line breaks within words): Mensch das ist super lieb. Human that is super nice. Man, that’s really nice. Ich war nur ehrlich und habe jetzt den Salat. I was just… Continue reading I’m slightly acidic

Scott Spires, the lakefront linguist, has an insightful essay about machine translation on his blog: The term “idiot savant” appears to have fallen into disuse. Perhaps it’s considered insensitive nowadays, or simply inaccurate. However, if one goes back to the root meaning of the Greek word idiotes – a private person, taking no interest in public affairs… Continue reading “Machine Translation and Savant Syndrome”

More avant-garde poetry brought to you by a machine translation system that is still learning the ropes: I put my son on my son, no. 6, and he scratched herself, thought it was all about this pants, I thought that it comes from these pants. I am still sending a picture of these pants, I… Continue reading These pants.

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

Here’s an interesting snatch of machine translation I edited recently: Source: “Ich habe mich wirklich gefreut! Ehrlich!” Machine translation: “I was really mad! Raw!” Actual meaning: “I was really happy! Honestly!” Well, that’s a fail. “Sich freuen” and “ehrlich” aren’t even the kind of words that have really different translations depending on the context. This… Continue reading Translations from machines or heaven

Linguee, which is a very useful online resource for translators, has come up with a new machine translation program and wow, it’s pretty good. For years Linguee has been collecting translated material online, which allows it to function as a dictionary with endless samples. When you enter a word or phrase you see its dictionary… Continue reading DeepL: whoa!

Recently, while slumming it at the Extremely Cheap Translation Service, I ran across two texts that were strange in the same way. The first was a German text: “Hallo meine hübsche Dame, wie machst du diesen schönen Morgen?”, which was already translated as “Good morning my pretty lady, how are you doing this fine morning?”… Continue reading If this translation is wrong, I don’t want to be right

When I have nothing more pressing to do and want to earn some extra cash, I work for an extremely cheap translation service, the name of which I shall not divulge here in case they disapprove of my comments. The service is a website offering soi-disant accurate translations at about half the price professional translators… Continue reading Extremely cheap translation services: pros and cons

Google Translate presents another German poetry classic. This one is a little ditty you can sing while changing for bed. The original is by Goethe, who first wrote it as a stand-alone piece but eventually assigned it to Gretchen in Faust – she putters around her bedroom complaining that it’s too hot and she feels scared, so,… Continue reading GT presents Der König in Thule