Language-Learning Apps

A few weeks ago, I referred to one language app, and now I’ve been told about another, the “Vocabulary Trainer”. It’s a “a mobile app to learn the most frequent words, travel phrases and slang (in total over 10,000 words and phrases) in over 30 languages.” It sounds intriguing, but I’m not sure if I think apps are the best way to learn languages. They can help in the moment, but I wonder if the material actually stays with you. What do you think?

Vegetarian Translation App

As a translator, I’m often suspicious of computer programmes or apps that purport to do what we do, and to do it as well as we do. But there are some instances when an app would be helpful, such as when travelling.

So I was intrigued to learn about this vegetarian translation app. It seems as though it would be very helpful; I haven’t eaten meat in over 15 years and I’ve often had trouble while on trips. The app includes 50 languages, including Chinese; China was probably the hardest country for me to visit as a vegetarian. I kept being told that supposedly vegetarian dishes had pork in them and that I shouldn’t worry as “pork isn’t meat”! If only I’d had this app then!

Do you know of other translation apps that are actually useful and accurate?

Café Conversations

If you live in or near Norfolk, you might be interested in this free series of discussions that I've organized. Each conversation is hosted by an academic or a graduate student from the University of East Anglia and they are all free to attend.

Café Conversations on Literature, Culture, and Language
November 2012 to May 2013
Run by staff and students in LDC, AMS, and LCS at UEA

All cafés take place at 2 pm in the White Lion Café at 19-21 White Lion Street in Norwich.

19 November
Can Writing be Taught?
Professor Andrew Cowan
UEA pioneered the teaching of creative writing as a university subject in 1970, and for the next 25 years it remained almost the only university to offer an MA in creative writing, despite the enormous success of some of its alumni, such as Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro.  In the last 15 years, however, the subject has really caught on, until there is barely a university anywhere that doesn't offer creative writing in some form.  And yet still the question is asked, Can writing be taught?  Andrew Cowan is a graduate of the UEA MA, where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.  He is now the Director of the UEA programme.  And he is asking the same question.

28 November
Through the Looking-Glass: The Origins and Afterlife of Nonsense Literature
Dr Thomas Karshan
What is a snark? what is a boojum? must they be something, or nothing? where do they come from? and do we need to know, if we are to enjoy and appreciate nonsense literature? This café conversation will explore nonsense literature, especially through Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”, saying a little about its origins, and exploring the philosophical issues around sense and nonsense with which Carroll was concerned. We’ll think together about why all great literature, and not just nonsense, needs to invent its own words, and we’ll look a little at a passage of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, much influenced by Carroll’s Alice, which is only invented words. And then we’ll have a go at inventing our own words - and ask if in doing so we have invented, if only for a moment, our own new world.

5 December
God Loveth Adverbs
Philip Wilson
Why does God love adverbs? And why does Stephen King hate them? And what does this tell us about literature? This session explores the contention that literature is about showing, not telling, and investigates ways that writers approach their task and the difference between literature and genre fiction.

14 December
Politicomics
Alex Valente
Just how political can comics be? Can they (or have they) be used for propaganda purposes? We will discuss the ideological messages that the comics medium can convey. The texts we will look at range from the most explicit (e.g. Palestine, by Joe Sacco, or V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd) to those that hide their political agendas a little deeper.

16 January
American Ghost Towns
Dr Malcolm McLaughlin
All across the United States there are eerily abandoned towns - where tumbleweeds roll along empty Main Streets, where only the shells of buildings remain. These so-called ghost towns are familiar cultural references and seem to say something about the other side of the American Dream. Some are former mining settlements, which boomed and declined with  equal rapidity. Some are towns that were left stranded when interstate highways cut through the land in the 1950s, and passed them by. But, since the 1970s, some of America's once-famous cities have been equally stricken by depopulation: when factories packed up and left town, so did the people. Even "Motor City" Detroit has been shrinking. What can we learn about America from looking at its historical ghost towns and modern-day shrinking cities? And how have the people who remain been working to reinvent their cities and make them liveable for the twenty-first century?

30 January
“Bearing Witness”: Seen but not Witnessed
Dr Rachael Mclennan and Dr Rebecca Fraser
This cafe will reflect on how we talk about and understand traumatic experiences that we have not borne direct witness to. It will consider to what extent representations, both visual and scholarly, of traumatic events distort or assist in understanding such experiences. Dr Rachael Mclennan and Dr Rebecca Fraser will be drawing on their own research concerning the Holocaust in American literature and culture and slavery in the United States respectively as case studies for further exploration of these issues.

6 February
The Pleasures and Politics of Historical Fiction
Dr Hilary Emmett
This café will engage the problem of how to balance our pleasure in reading historical fiction with some of the ethical issues that arise in rewriting the past to entertain audiences of the present.  Possible novels for consideration include historical fictions that are closely aligned to verifiable historical events (such as Hilary Mantel’s recent Booker Prize-winning blockbusters in comparison with more controversial re-imaginings of history like Kathryn Stockett’s The Help) as well as novels that seek to tell forgotten, repressed or traumatic stories such as Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved or Caryl Philips’ The Nature of Blood.

18 February
Meet the Pastons: An Introduction to Norwich’s Best Known Medieval Family
Elizabeth McDonald
Norwich’s medieval past can simultaneously seem a palpable and enigmatic part of our city’s history: we are surrounded by stunning examples of medieval architecture but imagining or understanding who used these buildings can be challenging. Thankfully the Paston family left us numerous letters, written between 1425-1495, in which we get a vibrant glimpse of what life in Norwich was like for a wealthy (but socially insecure) family. These letters provide a rich tapestry of personalities: surprisingly strong, willful, female characters; respectable men of the Law; feckless sons and problematic daughters.  We find the family concerned with castle defenses, “keeping up with the joneses,” life at court, and poorly made love matches. We will look at some of these letters and come face-to-face with life in Medieval Norwich.

27 February
Telling it Well? Mourning Autobiography
Dr Rachael McLennan
This cafe attempts to account for the popularity of autobiographies of illness and grief. These might be understood as a subgenre of the ‘misery memoir’, which has been especially successful since the 1990s. With reference to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) and Blue Nights (2011), Dr Rachael McLennan will consider the following questions: what pleasures and risks do such autobiographical projects present for writers and readers? How might autobiographies of grief, in particular, challenge traditional definitions and understandings of autobiography?

6 March
Introduction to Translation
Dr B.J. Epstein
What is involved in translating a piece of writing from one language to another? Why is translation one of the most fascinating and important careers? Why does translation matter?  After a general background to what translation is, we will practice a short translation/adaptation exercise together, either into another language or from English to English. Then we will discuss the joys and challenges of translation.

13 March
Who Do You Think You Are and Should You Care? Genealogy and the Pitfalls of Family History
Dr Rebecca Fraser
With the explosion of accessible material tracing one’s own family history through genealogical sites such as ancestry.com everybody can be an amateur historian. Yet, what is we dig back into our own histories and discover things about our ancestors that we find uncomfortable, disturbing, or even damaging to our own sense of self and who we are? This cafe will reflect on the very real value of genealogical research but also consider the limitations of the resources available and the possibility that we might not always like what we find. Dr Rebecca Fraser will be drawing on her own research concerning tracing the life story of Sarah Hicks Williams, a relatively unknown woman, living in nineteenth century America.

21 March
Norfolk Noir
Henry Sutton
I'll be talking about my new novel My Criminal World, which is being published by Harvill Secker on 2 April 2013.  The novel addresses issues of violence and entertainment, genre writing and so-called literary writing and what makes popular fiction work. It is also effectively set in Norwich/Norfolk, and it/my talk will look at aspects of provincialism, and what I'd like to call Norfolk Noir.

2 April
Proving Beauty
Dr Ross Wilson
We can prove that the chemical properties of water are H2O; we can prove that the earth orbits the sun; but can we prove that an object is beautiful? This conversation will discussion this question by working, in particular, with a number of poems that may or may not be 'beautiful'.

17 April
Writers, Interviews and Journalism, with Henry James
Dr Kate Campbell
It’s easy to take interviews for granted although they are central to modern life. Most of us will have had job interviews and we will at times have read interviews with famous writers and other celebrities. The kind of interviews that we know in journalism have been around for considerably less than two hundred years. After glancing at their history, this conversation explores some of the issues that interviews by writers and with writers raise, with discussion of two or three interviews, including the response of a famous writer, Henry James, in a rare interview that might have been a hoax.

26 April
What’s the Point of Holocaust Poetry?
Professor Jean Boase-Beier
We will look at a poem about the Holocaust by Rose Auslaender and ask why she and others chose to put their experiences of the Holocaust into poetry. How does it make us feel? Can we relate to things that happened so long ago and in another place?

1 May
Here Be Monsters
Dr Jacob Huntley
Vampires and zombies stalk the contemporary cultural landscape, more prevalent and popular than ever before. What is it that makes these modern representations of monstrosity such a pervasive force – and what do they mean? Monstrosity has always provided a valuable way of expressing fears or taboos, providing symbolic representation for what is unknown or misunderstood, or as a way of designating Otherness. Whether they are social metaphors – such as Romero’s shopping mall zombies – or figurations of unconscious forces – such as, incubi, Lamia or Mr Hyde – these demonstrative presences are all around us.      

8 May
Can Machines Translate?
Dr Jo Drugan
This cafe builds on BJ Epstein's event on 6 March (but attendance at that session is not a prerequisite). How far can machines carry out the ‘fascinating and important’ task of translation? Even before modern computers were invented, authors such as H.G. Wells and popular science fiction such as Star Trek had imagined ‘Universal Translators’, enabling communication across all languages. Do recent advances such as Google Translate and smartphones bring these technologies within our grasp? What are their uses and limits? Feel free to try out free translation apps online or on your phone before the cafe.

15 May
The Writing of Disaster
Dr Wendy McMahon
It has been said that disaster shuts down language, renders words meaningless and art inadequate, for how can we describe or depict the indescribable, put words to suffering and trauma when it is so total? This café considers the role of the writer and writing in a decade marked in America by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. The café will pose questions such as, what kind of cultural representation of disaster is possible, or, indeed, necessary? What role do ethics play in the writing of disaster? What can words really achieve in light of such trauma? It is hoped, by the end of the café, that we will have worked some way towards answering these types of questions, and considered the place of culture in national healing narratives.

Translation Tools

I’m a low-tech translator. I use my knowledge, dictionaries, other reference works, the internet, translation networks, and other contacts in order to translate.

But I know that a lot of other translators rely on tools. I don’t, in part because I think they actually require quite a bit of work that makes them not quite worthwhile. But here’s a link to a short piece on translation tools. I don’t agree with the list (people are needed for much more than the final draft!), but it’s interesting to see where non-language professionals think our field is going.

Translating Just One Word

Along with the plethora of emails lately about crowdsourcing translations (see the last post), a few people have contacted me about their new programs for “translating just one word”. I’m not sure why such programs would be useful, though their marketing folks claim it’s a convenient way of helping people read and understand websites.

Such programs won’t be successful or beneficial until machines have a way of learning context. And if computer programs are only fed with one word, they won’t be given the context anyway. As you saw a few posts back on what can go wrong with just using the dictionary to look up words, you need context and you need people’s brains in order to make sense of words, phrases, and sentences.

If you need to translate just one word, you’d be better analyzing the sentence and looking up the word while being away of the context. A program is completely unnecessary.

Crowdsourcing Translations

Recently, a number of companies have contacted me to ask me to advertise their new free crowdsourcing translation services. I suppose I don’t feel willing to do this, because I am suspicious of just how well such services can work.

For example, many of us look at Wikipedia for information, but we know that it isn’t always accurate, so we always make sure we check the info against other sites or texts. Would people do that with translations as well? Would they have the ability to do so?

Also, how can non-professional translators understand all the language and context in a given text? How can they know exactly what is involved in translation work? Would you let a crowd of people operate on you, just because it was free and they thought they’d know how to do it? No? Then why let a crowd of people translate your texts?

One of these websites even wrote to me to say that besides their free option, they also allow “customers” the option of paying for a better service, one that “allow[s] users of their programs to opt for a more accurate and professional level of translation through hybrid translation, if they so choose.” If you want “a more accurate and professional level of translation”, why not pay a translator? You know, the old-fashioned method of getting a translation done.

What do you think?

What Machine Translation Can and Can’t Do

This is a guest post by Hassan Sawaf. Hassan Sawaf is the Chief Scientist at SAIC Linguistics Division where he works on the Omnifluent™ linguistics solution. He can be reached at hassan.sawaf@saic.com.

I have encountered quite a few myths regarding the capabilities of machine translation (MT) technology in the close to twenty years I have worked in the natural language processing and MT fields. Recently, the technology has developed to the point that most translators will use or encounter it at some point in their career. With this in mind, I have put together a short list of what MT can and can’t do so that translators can best use their time and resources.

MT Can: Translate speech-to-speech and speech-to-text.

It is often assumed machine translation only covers text-to-text translations, however recent advances in MT and automated speech recognition (ASR) technology have enabled far-reaching applications. Automated foreign language closed captioning is one example, conversing with a hotel owner while traveling would be another.

MT Can’t: Convey information instantly from all mediums or types of media.

MT technology is not yet the Star Trek “Universal Translator.” Even in the most advanced technology with fully integrated ASR, speech-to-speech and speech-to-text is near real time and a non-trivial process. After a phrase is spoken, it can be displayed and edited by a human before being synthesized and voiced by the machine to minimize potential errors. Also, MT can’t convey or communicate information reliably from all types of media such as (still or motion) pictures.

MT Can: Be used for important business, transactional or personal matters.

Many people are surprised when I tell them MT can be used in a healthcare setting. However, MT technology is already being employed by hospitals, via tablet devices, to better communicate with their patients. This is possible because advanced MTs can be tailored to specific domains or industries, so that highly technical terms, like “hilus of the lung” are as easily recognizable as common words like “home.”

MT Can’t: Be used in situations when style, creativity or instant clarity is required.

MT is not ideal for language requiring stylistic or creative input such as marketing or legal documents. While the technology can be used in a healthcare setting to distribute vaccines, it would not be helpful in a situation requiring instant clarity or in advertisements where specific words and their connotations are chosen carefully and have significant cultural meaning.

MT Can: Be customized for highly accurate translation

MT technology, on average, can achieve 80 percent accuracy compared to a professional human translator. In some cases, this level of accuracy can achieve enough understanding for the purposes of the communication. True hybrid machine translation (HMT) technologies, which integrate statistical and rule based translation, can achieve close to 95 percent accuracy once they have been tailored for a specific industry or domain. In my experience, the accuracy of MT is the biggest misconception among translators who may not have experienced the more sophisticated, customized technology.

MT Can’t: Reach 100 percent accuracy.

Even with the next generation of MT technology it is extremely unlikely that it will ever achieve 100 percent accuracy. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the best explanation is that human communication is extremely complex. Even if I am in the same room, viewing the same presentation as my colleague who is speaking my native tongue I might only understand 95 percent of his intended meaning.


MT Can: Be used by translators to be more efficient

I have heard many analogies, but I like to compare MT to a car. You can get to where you want to go without it, but by using the technology you are going to get there faster and/or more comfortably. There are many kinds of vehicles and its important to select the type based on need, however, the translator is still in the driver’s seat. In the past, only the largest language service providers could afford MT, but now many vendors have Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings making the technology affordable for freelance translators.

MT Can’t: Replace human translators

The amount of data each year is increasing exponentially, and the increased rate of globalization means more and more of it needs to be translated. MT is a tool that will make human translators more efficient so they can focus their time on content that needs the creative, stylistic human touch.

Some Reading

Here is some more reading for you:

The first article is on machine translation.

The next piece is on the translation of poetry.

Here is a blog on Spanish-English translation.

A colleague of mine at the University of East Anglia, the poet George Szirtes, also has an interesting blog.

Automated Translation

I’ve heard through the translation grapevine that some translators are using this new site as a source for translation help or initial translations. I still avoid all machine translation, but I’d be curious to learn whether other translators use such things as tools for their work.

Babylon Websites

Last year, I was asked to try out the Babylon dictionary and translation services. I always feel a bit guilty when I am invited to review something and then don't like it as much as I had hoped I would.

The dictionary provides quite a bit of information for each word, though only a couple of translations (to Irish and Welsh for each of the words I chose -- not quite the most useful languages). And the translation software didn't work at all from English to Swedish in my experience. It kept offering me translations to a Cyrillic language for some reason. Spanish, Norwegian, and Danish worked somewhat better, especially the Spanish.

In sum, I'd say the dictionary is pretty good for language-learners while the translation software definitely needs improvement.

A Round-Up of Articles

As usual, several of the articles I’ve found interesting are from the NY Times. The first is on the publishing industry.

The next is on computer translation.

Another piece is about bailing out the writers.

I also enjoyed an article on teaching literature.

Finally, a piece about the Icelandic author Halldór Laxness. This article mentions an early novel by Laxness, which is now out in a “vigorous translation” to English, whatever that means.

He died writer Chingiz Aitmatov

It is, of course, cruel to use someone's death as an example. However, this article, translated by machine translation software and sent to me by translator Eric Dickens, is yet more proof of what a mistake it is to rely on translation software.

He died writer Chingiz Aitmatov

writer Chingiz Aitmatov died in a clinic in Germany on June 10, 2008. He had not lived to 80 - anniversary a few months. Classic Kyrgyz and Russian literature, he was one of the most famous and beloved writers for many millions of people, Bakililar.AZ passes with reference to the BBC.

His novels and novels, "Farewell, Gulsary "," White steamer "," Pegy dog, running the edge of the sea "," I lasted longer than a century day "," Plaha "made him well-deserved glory and entered the textbooks and hrestomatii.

In one interview, Chingiz Aitmatov said that love - this is the true home of vitality. And in his works seen a tremendous love for the author's rights is part of nature, which, in turn, inform, acquiring human traits.

According to Tatar Ravilya Buharaeva writer, "his home, his world, in which it was, is the world of mythology and folklore Kyrgyz mountains and space .... Because mythology - a reflection of mythology in everyday life. And in this sense he was a consummate craftsman ".

C stigma "enemy of the people " Torekulovich Chingiz Aitmatov was born in 1928, in Kyrgyzstan. When he was nine years old, in 1937, his father was arrested. After another year of his shot.

Chingiz son grew up with the stigma enemy of the people. That played a big role in shaping the identity of the writer. His Uzbek counterpart Hamid Ismailov believes that this probably was the "initial impetus to the fact that he was able to trust their feelings only white sheet of paper, where he was able, so to speak, vyplesnut himself ".

At the age of 20 years Aitmatov received by the Agricultural Institute in the city of Frunze (the current Bishkek). Even a student, Aitmatov was published in the periodical press their first stories in Kyrgyz language.

Joined the highest literary courses in Moscow, he was able only in 1956, after HH CPSU congress. That is, after being exposed Stalin's personality cult, a repressed, including his father Aytmatova, have begun to rehabilitate.

At the end of the year courses in 1958, Aitmatov published a story, "Jamil" That brought him worldwide fame.

"Jamil" - the thing is so great that even a genius for its communist leaders were unable to recognize the danger in which it lies - believed Hamid Ismailov. -- When rereads Aytmatova, amazes his literary genius ".

Novels and Aytmatova novels written over the next 20 years, read throughout the world.

" What would he nor wrote, either, "White steamer", where he makes this great image of mother-olenihi, or wild camel from "Burannogo polustanka ", or - this great thing, absolutely not afraid of the word - "Pegy dog, running edge of the sea ", which refers to the north, are all seen a single vision. This is - an attempt to find a common language of all humanity "- Ravil writer believes Buharaev.

Titulovanny Writer

Over the next quarter-century Aitmatov wrote a number of novels and novels, which are now classics of Russian and Kyrgyz literature.

This "Topolek in my red kosynke " "first teacher", "Farewell, Gyulsary! " "White steamer", "Pegy dog, running the edge of the sea", "I lasted longer than a century Day" (novel, which was renamed the "stop Burana"), "Plaha ".

In these works Aitmatov raises the eternal questions: about a man, his soul, feelings, conscience. That's what Chingiz Aitmatov told himself: "Conscience - is a great heritage, the great legacy of the human race, human consciousness, the human spirit. Thanks to a person becomes a man of conscience ".

Chingiz Aitmatov was one of the most Soviet writers to style: Hero of Socialist Labor, the winner of many awards, deputy leader or member of many groups and committees ...

In 1990, Aitmatov is becoming a diplomat. First, he was Ambassador USSR, and later the Ambassador of Kyrgyzstan in the Benelux countries.

Biograf Abdyldazhan Akmataliev writer believes that the diplomatic service Aytmatova gave Kyrgyz much: " Since Soviet times world to know about Aytmatove more than about Kyrgyzstan. He embodies our spiritual passport, our calling card ".

However, in March 2008, Aitmatov was dismissed without explanation from the post of Ambassador of Kyrgyzstan in Europe.

In the middle May writer, while in Kazan on film shooting in the novel "I lasted longer day century", was hospitalized with a diagnosis of "kidney failure ".

Then he was sent to continue treatment City of Nuremberg (Germany). I

n one interview, Chingiz Aitmatov said: "I do feel life as a tragedy. Since zhizneutverzhdayuschim finale ".

" Upasi you about people from the ills nelyudskih - Upasi fire neugasimyh, From the bloody Battle irresistible, Forbid you from irreparable Affairs, Upasi you about people from the ills nelyudskih ... "Aytmatova end of the book" Cry of migratory birds

So You Think You Can Translate

The popularity of reality TV shows has sometimes made me wonder what a reality show about translation would involve. Note that I don’t have a television, so I may be a bit off on what the average reality show is all about, but from what I understand, it involves challenges and each week someone is kicked off the show.

So we have a group of eager wannabe-translators. What would they face on So You Think You Can Translate?

Every week, our eager contestants would pick a new style of text out of a box (financial report, poem, academic article, medical records, play, essay, speech, contract, short story, etc.) and they would have to translate that on their own. To make this even more difficult, they could also pick references from a box, so they would be limited to using one or some combination of the following: computer tools, dictionaries, Internet references, encyclopedias, or libraries. Contestants might get a total of two special links for the entire season, and that would mean that if they were really stuck on a translation, they could decide to call a professional translator or some other expert (a professor, language teacher, botanist, lawyer, novelist, editor, architect, etc.) for help.

In addition, there would be group, pair, and individual challenges. Challenges might include learning a new language, performing a sight translation, working on a relay translation, subtitling, interpreting, giving a presentation on some aspect of translation, learning how to use a new computer tool, reviewing a book on language or translation, negotiating with a customer, handling an angry client, advertising their services, and putting together a literary magazine of new translations.

The contestants’ translations would be critiqued by a panel of experienced judges, but the viewers would vote on who the winners of the other challenges should be. Each week, the contestant with the least votes would have to leave the show.

As the season draws to a close, the ultimate winner would be pronounced the nation’s Best Translator and she or he would get help starting her or his own freelance business. This would include an office with the works (computer, big desk, ergonomic chair, coffee machine, full sets of dictionaries and encyclopedias, etc.) plus a year’s worth of advice from an accountant, a mentor, and membership in any appropriate translators’ association.

I know I’d watch this show! Anyone else? What else should be on it?

Can We Can-Can With Cans? Or, Educating Customers About Machine Translation

A few weeks ago, someone from a publishing company sent me an email. She said that a book she was working on included one sentence in Swedish and she wondered if I could edit that sentence (for free, natch).

So, though I had a lot of (paying) work and was out of the country, I looked at the original English and compared it to the Swedish. It was bizarrely bad. It was one of those sentences that includes words that can have multiple (non-related) translations and it was as though someone had just picked the first possible word from the dictionary rather than paying attention to the context and to parts of speech (for example, in the sentence I just wrote, I used the word "can" as a verb. "Can" can also be a noun, as in "a can of beans". And then there's the "can-can", but that's a different story.). There was no way that the sentence she sent me could have been translated by a professional translator.

I asked the editor who had done the translation and I also mentioned how terrible it was. She responded that it was, of course, from the internet. She didn't seem at all aware that machine translations might not be reliable. And she told me, rather shortly, I felt, to just fix it up right away.

Now, I am someone who believes in always responding to emails I receive and I am also someone who believes strongly in educating customers and consumers whenever possible. But in this case, I was so annoyed by her attitude (just assuming I was going to do work for her for free, especially given that I was out of the country and away from my desk, which she knew from the fact that I had an away message on) and by her somewhat snobby ignorance that I just couldn't bring myself to reply to her. I should have turned it into a lesson for her, but I had so much else going on and was so offended by her messages that I let it go. I regret that now.

But my regret is not really the point here. The point is -- how can we wean people off machine translations? How can we teach them what translation really is and what it involves? And how can we get people to understand that our time and expertise don't come free?

Just think about this -- everyone reading this will know what I meant by those questions. But if you run them through a machine translator, you'll probably get some nonsense about tin cans instead. That's simply not good enough.

A Round-Up of Articles

I’m off to a conference on story-telling now, so here is a list of interesting articles to keep you occupied until I return.

An article on why you shouldn’t rely on Babel Fish – apparently it nearly caused a diplomatic incident.

Here’s a piece on language enrollments increasing. Thank you to Erika Dreifus for sending me this article!

This article is on the spread of English as a global language and how that might change the standard form of the language.

Some information on the influence of Irish on American slang.

This article is on titles, but it includes a paragraph on translation that shows how some authors are not understanding when it comes to challenges involved in translation. Here is quote:
“He even described receiving a letter from a Finnish translator, which said (in Heller's paraphrase): ‘I am translating your novel Catch-22 into Finnish. Would you please explain me one thing: what means Catch-22? I didn't find it in any vocabulary. Even assistant air attaché of the USA here in Helsinki could not explain exactly.’ Heller added: ‘I suspect the book lost a great deal in its Finnish translation.’´

Not too surprising – Americans are reading less, as this article discusses.

Unfortunately, the last two speakers of a dying language won’t speak to one another.

Finally, this article discusses translation in English-speaking countries. It says:
“In Germany 13% of books are translations. In France it's 27%, in Spain 28%, in Turkey 40% and in Slovenia 70%, but in Britain and America the best estimates suggest that the fraction of books on the shelves which started off in another language is somewhere around two per cent…Translation is considered by many universities to be insufficiently significant or original to add lustre to an academic CV, while publishers routinely sweep evidence of translation off the covers of books.”

A Round-Up of Articles

Once again I’ve noticed quite a few articles of interest of late.

Here is a piece on translation software from the Wall Street Journal.

This interview with Pierre Bayard from the New York Times discusses reading.

An article from The Hindu looks at an anthology of short fiction from South India and discusses translation in India.

This BBC article on interpreting is from a few years ago, but is nevertheless worth reading.

An interview with lexicographer Erin McKean provides insight into a career working with dictionaries.

Just for Fun – Machine Translations or Novel Excerpts?

Can you tell the difference between machine translations from German and sentences from novels by William Faulkner? It is hard to know if this silly page is a harsher criticism of Faulkner or of machine translation!

The Lord Conrad Black Trial, Translation, and Learning Languages

Someone recently sent me an article from the International Herald Tribune. It has nothing to do with translation (instead, it is about the Lord Conrad Black trial, in which my father happens to be serving as an expert witness), but I noticed something interesting next to the content of the piece. Besides the usual features, such as “e-mail this article” or “print,” there is a “translate” function. A reader can choose this function in order to get either detailed English definitions of the words in the piece or translations of the words to Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, or German. The service is run by Ultralingua, a company I had never heard of before.

The definitions/translations serve a purpose; namely, for readers for whom English is not their native tongue, this helps them understand any difficult words they come across. However, the service doesn’t recognize numbers or names (“Conrad Black” is suggested to be “Consanguíneo Negro” in Spanish!), and of course there is no way for the machine translations (really just words copied from bilingual dictionaries) to understand or work with the context, which means that the words are translated out of context (i.e. many possible translations are given) and the translations do not become a coherent and complete text. Rather than attempting to be a translation tool, I think this service could instead be exploited for language learning. It would be useful (and fascinating!) for many of us to be able to click on any word on any website and be able to immediately access a detailed definition and translations to a multitude of languages.

A Babel Fish That Doesn't Quite Babble Yet

The New Scientist reports that some researchers believe they’ve found an automatic translator. This device recognizes phonemes, and then words, and converts them to the other language. So far, the researchers have gotten the system to recognize about 100 Mandarin words that it then translated to English or Spanish. The program apparently has about 62% accuracy.

While translation technology has certainly developed a lot in recent years and this latest idea is interesting, I think it’s safe to say a real Babel fish has not yet arrived, so simultaneous interpreters (and the rest of us who work with translation in some way) are still needed.