Losing it in the translation

Losing it in the translation

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Originally published 14 December 1998

Can machines trans­late human languages?

Here is the first line of a sto­ry of mine, which has appeared in oth­er lan­guages: “Begin with beauty.”

And here are trans­la­tions, two French, two German:

Com­mencez par la beauté.
Pour com­mencer, la beauté.

Fan­gen Sie mit Schön­heit an.
Schön­heit als Auftakt.

The first trans­la­tion of each pair was churned out by the AltaVista com­put­er trans­la­tor, one of the free ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the AltaVista guide to the Inter­net. The sec­ond is by a human trans­la­tor, employed by my for­eign publishers.

The com­put­er pro­vides a lit­er­al ren­der­ing in both lan­guages: “Begin by beau­ty,” “Begin with beauty!”

The human French trans­la­tor choos­es a more con­ver­sa­tion­al tone: Pour com­mencer, la beauté. “To begin, beauty.”

And the human Ger­man trans­la­tor opts for a musi­cal theme: Schön­heit als Auf­takt. “Beau­ty as prelude.”

In both cas­es, the human trans­la­tors add a twist that would nev­er occur to the machine.

The final line of the same sto­ry is spo­ken by one lover to anoth­er: “Hold me.”

Tenez-moi. “Hold me,” says the oh-so lit­er­al com­put­er in French. Viens. “Come to me,” says the human trans­la­tor, cheer­ful­ly ignor­ing the orig­i­nal English.

Hal­ten Sie mich an. “Restrain me,” says the com­put­er in Ger­man, entire­ly miss­ing the mean­ing because of its inabil­i­ty to grasp con­text. The human trans­la­tor catch­es both the mean­ing and the romance: Unarme mich. “Embrace me.”

Human lan­guage is suf­fi­cient­ly rich and con­text-depen­dent that even two- and three-word sen­tences of ordi­nary words can befud­dle the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of machine translators.

Still, as we surf the world­wide web, explor­ing a plan­et’s worth of infor­ma­tion, it is handy to have the AltaVista com­put­er there to trans­late, instant­ly, what­ev­er web sites look promis­ing. Not with the grace and agili­ty of a human trans­la­tor, but the results are often serviceable.

Here is a machine trans­la­tion from a French site, cho­sen at ran­dom: “Who can say which to us is real­ly the goal of the life? Sup­pose that you return vis­it to an engi­neer work­ing with the design of a com­pli­cat­ed appa­ra­tus, which is com­plete­ly unknown for you. How could you dis­cov­er with what serves this appa­ra­tus? Best would­n’t it be to ask it to its designer?”

Not bad for a trans­la­tion ser­vice avail­able free to everyone.

But my, oh my, how far we have to go before machines can rival human brains.

Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter pos­sess­es one of the clever­est human brains at work (or play) on the plan­et today; he teach­es in sev­er­al depart­ments at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­ana, includ­ing com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture, com­put­er sci­ence, psy­chol­o­gy, and phi­los­o­phy. He is best known for his book Gödel, Esch­er, Bach. His most recent work, which appeared last year, is titled Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Lan­guage.

Le Ton Beau de Marot means, lit­er­al­ly, “the sweet tone of Marot.” The book is a 632-page med­i­ta­tion on the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in trans­lat­ing a light­heart­ed poem of 28 three-syl­la­ble lines addressed by the 16th-cen­tu­ry poet Clé­ment Marot to an ail­ing young lady. Hof­s­tadter ranges over world lit­er­a­ture and cog­ni­tive sci­ence in his dis­cus­sion of the art and craft of trans­la­tion, but he always cir­cles back to Marot’s delight­ful verses.

Here is a part of Marot’s original:

"Ma mignonne,
Je vous donne
Le bon jour;
Le séjour
C'est prison.
Guérison
Recouvrez,
Puis ouvrez
Votre porte
Et qu'on sorte
Vitement…"

Which Hof­s­tadter ren­ders lit­er­al­ly as:

"My sweet,
I bid you
A good day;
The stay
Is prison.
Health
Recover,
Then open
Your door,
And go out
Quickly…"

Here is Hof­s­tadter again, in one of the many inge­nious ren­der­ings pro­vid­ed by him­self and his friends, col­leagues, and fam­i­ly, this time catch­ing more of the rhymed three-syl­la­ble cou­plets of the original:

"My sweet dear,
I send cheer—
All the best!
Your forced rest
Is like jail.
So don't ail
Very long.
Just get strong—
Go outside,
Take a ride!
Do it quick…"

Hof­s­tadter’s late wife Car­ol had offered:

"Chickadee,
I decree
A fine day.
Dart away
From your cage
And engage
In brave flight,
So you might
Flee the croup…"

My son Tom came up with the following:

"Schnookie lumps
How's the mumps?
Are you still
Very ill?
Please get well,
For life's hell
Without you.
When you do
Rise from bed,
Leap instead,
And make tracks…"

And here, final­ly, is what the AltaVista com­put­er trans­la­tor yields:

"My nice
I you give
The good day;
The stay
It is prison.
Cure
Cover,
Then open
Your gate
And that one left
Vitement…"

Not exact­ly ele­gant. And to make things worse, the machine is stumped by the archa­ic French word vite­ment, “quick­ly.”

There are more than a thou­sand lan­guage-trans­la­tion soft­ware prod­ucts on the mar­ket today, with dozens of new ones appear­ing every month. Since the 1950s, hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars have been spent try­ing to build a machine that can reli­ably turn one lan­guage into anoth­er, so far with only mod­est success.

For all of the remark­able progress in com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, the human brain can still run rings around the biggest and bright­est machines at catch­ing the drift, get­ting the joke, see­ing the point, and pick­ing up on wit, metaphor, word play, dou­ble mean­ings, puns, music, ele­gance, sweet tones, beauty.

When it comes to the mag­ic and mys­tery of lan­guage, machines still can’t com­pete with human brains.

Share this Musing: