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I seem to remember a book I read about one of the first CD-ROM projects to
be translated (the name of the product escapes me at present), from UK
English to US English.
The passage that was cited was, "The cheetah runs 80 miles flat out."
Translated to UK English, the sentence read, "The cheetah runs 80 miles
apartment out." This was correct. The spelling was fine. Just that the
transliteration program saw "flat" in the UK vernacular and it understood UK
English "flat" to mean US English "apartment" should the editors,
programmers, powers that be have eye-checked the translation, probably yes.
It was unfortunate that the person who caught this was an end-user, but
there you go.
Using transliteration programs oftentimes misses the "sense" and meaning
behind the words. What reads well in one language needs a human touch to
translate to another language. Maybe this isn't always the case, but
oftentimes, I find that I'd opt for the human eye over the programmatic way
of doing things.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Burns [mailto:bburns -at- scriptorium -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 10:35 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Machine translation Was RE: TRANSLATIONS
I would like to toss in a few words about machine translation, since that
was apparently what the original post has in mind.
I agree with what most of the responses have said concerning off-the-shelf
machine translation software. Anyone who has played with these features on
the web (like Babel Fish) can verify that they're good for "gisting" only
(that is, determining the gist of a web page or document). The assumption
I'm hearing, though, is that those off-the-shelf packages are the state of
machine translation today. That's not wholly the case. It's also not wholly
the case that you can't have reliable translation sentences. (Note that I
didn't say "error free.")
Machine translation is used in some industries where the technical language
changes slowly, the language sets are limited, and the complexity level of
the material is relatively low. Machine translation is typically combined
with a strenuously enforced program of controlled language. That is, you
don't get to write however you please. You use a constrained vocabulary and
formulaic sentence structures. As I understand, writers of controlled
English use tools that parse as the writers compose, so noncompliant syntax
or vocabulary is flagged as such.
<snip>
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