PWAC Victoria: Sid Tafler, Writing Sample

The Reading Room

Testing the Online Tower of Babel

by Sid Tafler © 1999

The adventures of language-leaping with Web translator Babelfish. This article was published in Localwave, Technology section, Aug. 16, 1999.

All right, the Net is less than perfect. But translation always is. So why should we expect anything less than letter-perfection from an Internet auto-translator?

Because we always hold the Internet up to higher standards. The Net is the magic box which can, they tell us, find practically anything, from the secrets to financial freedom to your old girlfriend who dumped you in Grade Six. We sit down, torque up the old browser, lean back and say, "So what can you do for me today?"

The very thought of a window box on your screen that will instantly translate anything you ask it to, with just a click of la souris (Fr.) is tantalizing--if you've never tried it before.

Who needs human translators any more? Phrase-books? Spanish lessons? Well, I hate to break it to you, but we still need them. That's because Web translators sure are fun to use, but are still no absolutamente perfecto (Sp.). And it's also because translation is always tricky because words and phrases have significati differenti differenti nei linguaggi (It.).

Allow me to demonstrate, using popular phraseology from outdated song lyrics, the perfect test of any translation device, and my own favourite Web translator, AltaVista's Babelfish.

Let's try "There she was just walking down the street." (I'm not going to challenge Babelfish with the original "a-walkin'.") The Spanish translation is a very elegant-sounding "Allí ella era el recorrer justo abajo de la calle." Great--you can almost sing it to the tune. Never content to leave things well enough alone, I ask Babelfish to translate this sentence back into English and get "There it was right to cross under the street." I try the same phrase in German, switch it back to English and get "There it was even going down the road." Hmmm. No wonder we didn't understand the Germans when we thought they said, "We are there even going down the road--but only to Poland."

Now I'm challenged. And I hope Babelfish is, too. Let's try something trickier, even more idiomatic. How about "itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie, yellow polka dot bikini?"--en français (who said no?). Go on, guess before you read further. Of course, it's "itsy-bitsy minuscule, bikini jaune de point de polka"! Back to English, it's, uh, "tiny itsy-bitsy, yellow bikini of point of hammer." I should have known that--I speak French (a little).

Let's try it the other way. I'll give you the phrase, you guess the language and the original English. "Verrà intorno alla montagna quando viene." It's beautiful. If I heard that as I checked into a hotel in Tuscany, I'd look for the view of the mountains from my room. In humble old English, it's just "She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes." Now take the Italian back to English and we get the problem with gender again, "It will come around to the mountain when it comes." Maybe they thought we were asking when the train will arrive.

Even more puzzling, when I try the phrase, "Meet me at midnight, Mary," it translates "Mary" as "Mary" in French, German, Italian and Portuguese, but finds the correct "Maria" in Spanish. This gets to me. I decide to stop playing fair. I take the operatic-sounding Italian translation, "Venirlo a contatto di alla mezzanotte, Mary" and tell Babelfish to translate this phrase from Spanish to English. To my surprise, it comes back with an equally operatic "To come it to contatto I gave alla mezzanotte, Mary." Tell this with a flourish to your wife or girlfriend and I guarantee a puzzled smile (if her name is Mary).

This less-than-perfection of Web translators is good news for flesh-and-blood translators. And maybe it bodes well for the rest of us humans who fear losing our jobs to technology. I took 10 years of French in school and I know it's our other official language, but the truth is "Je ne sais pas beaucoup au sujet du français que j'ai pris." (Don't know much about French I took.) So next time I'm in Quebec, I'll need all the help I can get.

Sid Tafler
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Last updated: April 23, 2001 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/tafler06.html