Machine translation used to be a big dream. Just like the behavioural school of psychology that had a simplistic view of education, it saw human languages as simple black boxes.
It was an idea that had great expectations. Man had made machines that could beat the best human chess masters and compose music so why not do away with human translators, also?
Today it is almost impossible not to bump into translation programs. Just google "Searchwarp" and you will soon see the "translate this page" option. So, just go ahead and try a few sentences. Then translate your phrase back into English and see what you will get.
When I began my translation science studies some years ago, the classic example of the prowess of machine translation was Jesus' words in Matthew 26:41, " The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak". The machine rendered it as "The whisky is good but the beef has gone bad."
What the early translation programs failed to take into account was the complexity of human cultures and language. A single word can have over ten different meanings, depending on the context. A human translator is usually more adept at discerning the intended meaning than a machine that pays too much attention to individual words.
Translation programs have improved recently, but the free versions we see on the Internet are still far from perfect. I tried translating Matthew 26:41 (English into Finnish) on Google's program and got, "The idea is ready but the meat is weak." I still do not know why "spirit" became "idea". Or does it have to do with a hidden new age ideology? Who knows.
Google's translation machine is not very good at guessing when words make up a sentence and when they just stand alone. Thus, it assumes that a sentence like "watch my bag" is not really a sentence at all but a series of partly unconnected words, i.e. two nouns (watch and bag) and a personal pronoun (my).
Idioms can be interesting. I tried translating "He raised a great hue and cry" and got, "he pretended being very scandalized".
If translation programs don't get any better I will not merely pretend. I might raise a great hue and cry.
How about that?
Joel Kontinen is an author and translator currently living in Finland. His bacground includes an MA in translation studies and a BA in Bible and Theology. He mostly writes about origins issues.
I never knew Google had that feature--thanks for the info and as for the mix up of the whiskey being good and the beef having gone bad--it gives you job security!
Thanks, Steve. There are some better translation programs - but they are not free. Human languages are incredibly complex systems, and thus Google will probably never be able to produce a somewhat acceptable translation.
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