After reading Miguel Helft's article called "Google's Computing Power Refines Translation Tool" which appeared on the front age of the New York Times (March 9, 2010), I decided that an article on his article and on the tool itself seemed to be in order. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the author, Miguel Helft covers Internet companies including Google and Yahoo for the Business Desk of the New York Times. More than 150 readers, including some translators, posted comments on the website and at least one translation agency sent a letter to the editor criticizing the journalist for not having consulted a single human translator.
As you might guess from the title, the article is about Google's use of human translations which are aligned to source-language texts in much the same way as translation memory software aligns two texts, "creating," what Dr. Te Taka Keegan, in The Official Google Blog, calls, "a virtuous cycle that benefits both human translators and machine translation". Now, I have absolutely no idea what he means by a "virtuous cycle". Perhaps he meant to say "virtual" in the sense that it was "simulated, or carried on by means of a computer network". Or, perhaps Dr. Keegan originally wrote in a language other than English and the blog was translated by Google Translate!
It goes without saying that there is definitely a place for this tool, just as there is a place for translation memory software, but I was appalled at the widespread use of Google Translate on jobs that really require a human translator who can use analysis, synthesis, association, memory, logic and, yes, imagination to recreate the text in the target language. This is especially true when dealing with documents that are not particularly well written and which contain a great deal of technical language, indeed, the bulk of the industrial translator's work. It is the human translator's knowledge of the subject area that enables him/her to understand the meaning of the source-language text and to accurately interpret it into the target language.
Interestingly, there is a sidebar to the article which features a passage from Le petit prince [The Little Prince] by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and a passage from Cien años de soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude] by Gabriel García Marquez. Both appear first in the original language followed by a human translation, then a Google Translate translation and one by each of two competitors. I thought it odd that only the names of the publishers of the human translations were given rather than the names of the human translators. This is an egregious omission on the part of the journalist.
In spite of the fact that many consider literary translation to be outside the domain of both machine translation and translation memory software, works of fiction were chosen to "put the tools to the test". When I first looked at the two passages, my initial thought was that both the original passages are well written in straightforward language, which makes a difference in any machine translation. Then, like a bolt out of the blue, it occurred to me that there are already human translations of those texts online and that that is exactly how Google works--by matching human-translated text with similar segments in the source language. Taking that into consideration, the fact that Google Translate's translation resembles the human translation so closely is no surprise at all.
Anyway, I decided that I would see what Google Translate could do with a couple of passages from real-life jobs. I chose one that has some of the characteristics of a literary work. The source-language text is first, followed by Google Translate's version:
Además del manejo de los lápices consta que hizo sus pinitos con los pinceles y se veía capacitado para emplear términos como "claroscuro", "efecto", "menudo", juzgar el mérito de una artista o llamar "bestia" nada menos que a Francisco Bayeu por su cuadro para el altar mayor de la iglesia de San Francisco el Grande, del cual conserva un boceto el X Museum, y a su arquitecto Juan de Villanueva por parecerle "bien".
Besides handling the pencils know that tried his hand with the brush and looked able to use terms such as "chiaroscuro", "effect", "often", judging the merit of an artist or call "beast"nothing less than Francisco Bayeu for his painting for the high altar of the church of San Francisco el Grande, which keeps a sketch of the X Museum, and his architect Juan de Villanueva because it seemed "fine."
So, I leave it to you to decide for yourself whether or not you agree with Alon Lavie, an associate research profesor in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University when he says: "What you see on Google Translate is state of the art in computer translations that are not limited to a particular subject area".
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/technology/09translate.html?scp=1&sq=google%20can%20now%20say&st=cse
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Friday, March 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
"PROFESSIONALISM" REVISITED
***
When U.S. translators get together at conferences and other gatherings, two things stand out. First of all, one need only listen to their conversations to know that they genuinely enjoy what they are doing. I have never met a translator who dreaded the thought of "going to work" and it goes way beyond mere pecuniary motivation. There is a genuine passion for language. The second thing that stands out, and it's hard to reconcile with the first, is what could be described as a rancorous prate about "bad translations", "disastrous translations" and "hilarious literal translations". Although no names are ever mentioned, it is implicit in these conversations that these translations were not done by "professional" translators. In fact, if we were to count the number of times the word "professional" occurs in translator discourse and use it as an indicator of translators' priorities in the same way that pundits use the words of politicians, it might give us pause.
So, what exactly is a "professional" translator? For me, the answer is very simple. A professional translator is a translator who earns his/her living (or part of it) by translating just as a professional writer earns a living by writing, a painter by painting and a baseball player by playing baseball. Otherwise, the person is an "amateur". That, however, is not what all the babble and blabber is about because, obviously, the translators who produced the "bad" translations were paid for them and the person or persons who paid were taken in because they hired "uncertified" translators to do the job, or so goes the story. In the eyes of these self-appointed guardians of translatordom, the only way that translation will ever be recognized as a "profession" is when all translators are tested and "certified". This will be the subject of a future article or articles.
Another factor in the inordinate use of the word "professional" has its roots in another definition of the word which is "of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: Lawyers, doctors, and other professional people." (my emphasis). As I pondered this definition it occurred to me that perhaps these would-be protectors of our noble profession are suffering not from "professional envy" but from "envy of [a] profession". George Witherington, a longtime translator, expresses it as follows:
"It arguably takes almost as much training and development to become a fully competent translator and interpreter as it does to become a doctor. Medical knowledge, teaching and best practice are dictated by the profession and not by the companies which do business in the health sector. Translator know-how, teaching and best practice have never been formalized in universities and translation companies in the same way as in medicine. The lack of a truly scientific basis has left these functions in the translation sphere exposed to commercial pressures."
In my opinion, this desire to "formalize" translation, to reduce it to a formula that can be taught and tested is one thing that has brought our profession and, yes, it truly is a profession, to its present sad state. Medicine is a science. Translation is an art. Both can be taught, but the processes and goals are vastly different. To attempt to make human language conform to a "scientific basis" is nothing short of ludicrous. It is as ludicrous as the idea that "you will never have to translate the same sentence again". That would be true only if that sentence appeared in exactly the same context as the previously translated sentence because the same original text frequently requires different translations in different contexts. In other words, retrieving an "exact match" from a database (or translation memory) may not be good enough. Recognizing this simple fact is an art; it is not a science. It requires that the human translator be sensitive to culture, beliefs and, above all, to have interpretive skills and common sense.
The foregoing fits in well with another definition of "professional" which is "having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job". And who is to decide whether the end product, albeit a translation, a painting or a theatrical performance has these qualities? I would say that it is the end user. If my client likes my translation, which exists among many other possibilities for conveying meaning, I am happy. I will not be overcome with remorse if, perchance, ten years down the road, I come upon that translation and decide that I would have done it differently.
When it comes to how we are paid for our work, I have one last thought on "professionalism". Several of my colleagues have been accused of being "unprofessional" in the way they have responded to those offers we all get to provide translation services for $.005 per word or less. Such offers seem far more "unprofessional" than any retort from a translator ever could be. In fact, they deserve the same response I would undoubtedly get if I asked my dentist to provide a sample filling so that I might see if I liked his work.
"It arguably takes almost as much training and deveopment to become a fully competent translator and interpreter as it does to become a doctor. Medical knowledge, teaching and best practice are dictated by the profession and not by the companies which do business in the health sector. Translator know-how, teaching and best practice have never been formalized in universities and translation companies in the same way as in medicine. The lack of a truly scientific basis has left these functions in the translation sphere exposed to commercial pressures."
When U.S. translators get together at conferences and other gatherings, two things stand out. First of all, one need only listen to their conversations to know that they genuinely enjoy what they are doing. I have never met a translator who dreaded the thought of "going to work" and it goes way beyond mere pecuniary motivation. There is a genuine passion for language. The second thing that stands out, and it's hard to reconcile with the first, is what could be described as a rancorous prate about "bad translations", "disastrous translations" and "hilarious literal translations". Although no names are ever mentioned, it is implicit in these conversations that these translations were not done by "professional" translators. In fact, if we were to count the number of times the word "professional" occurs in translator discourse and use it as an indicator of translators' priorities in the same way that pundits use the words of politicians, it might give us pause.
So, what exactly is a "professional" translator? For me, the answer is very simple. A professional translator is a translator who earns his/her living (or part of it) by translating just as a professional writer earns a living by writing, a painter by painting and a baseball player by playing baseball. Otherwise, the person is an "amateur". That, however, is not what all the babble and blabber is about because, obviously, the translators who produced the "bad" translations were paid for them and the person or persons who paid were taken in because they hired "uncertified" translators to do the job, or so goes the story. In the eyes of these self-appointed guardians of translatordom, the only way that translation will ever be recognized as a "profession" is when all translators are tested and "certified". This will be the subject of a future article or articles.
Another factor in the inordinate use of the word "professional" has its roots in another definition of the word which is "of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: Lawyers, doctors, and other professional people." (my emphasis). As I pondered this definition it occurred to me that perhaps these would-be protectors of our noble profession are suffering not from "professional envy" but from "envy of [a] profession". George Witherington, a longtime translator, expresses it as follows:
"It arguably takes almost as much training and development to become a fully competent translator and interpreter as it does to become a doctor. Medical knowledge, teaching and best practice are dictated by the profession and not by the companies which do business in the health sector. Translator know-how, teaching and best practice have never been formalized in universities and translation companies in the same way as in medicine. The lack of a truly scientific basis has left these functions in the translation sphere exposed to commercial pressures."
In my opinion, this desire to "formalize" translation, to reduce it to a formula that can be taught and tested is one thing that has brought our profession and, yes, it truly is a profession, to its present sad state. Medicine is a science. Translation is an art. Both can be taught, but the processes and goals are vastly different. To attempt to make human language conform to a "scientific basis" is nothing short of ludicrous. It is as ludicrous as the idea that "you will never have to translate the same sentence again". That would be true only if that sentence appeared in exactly the same context as the previously translated sentence because the same original text frequently requires different translations in different contexts. In other words, retrieving an "exact match" from a database (or translation memory) may not be good enough. Recognizing this simple fact is an art; it is not a science. It requires that the human translator be sensitive to culture, beliefs and, above all, to have interpretive skills and common sense.
The foregoing fits in well with another definition of "professional" which is "having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job". And who is to decide whether the end product, albeit a translation, a painting or a theatrical performance has these qualities? I would say that it is the end user. If my client likes my translation, which exists among many other possibilities for conveying meaning, I am happy. I will not be overcome with remorse if, perchance, ten years down the road, I come upon that translation and decide that I would have done it differently.
When it comes to how we are paid for our work, I have one last thought on "professionalism". Several of my colleagues have been accused of being "unprofessional" in the way they have responded to those offers we all get to provide translation services for $.005 per word or less. Such offers seem far more "unprofessional" than any retort from a translator ever could be. In fact, they deserve the same response I would undoubtedly get if I asked my dentist to provide a sample filling so that I might see if I liked his work.
"It arguably takes almost as much training and deveopment to become a fully competent translator and interpreter as it does to become a doctor. Medical knowledge, teaching and best practice are dictated by the profession and not by the companies which do business in the health sector. Translator know-how, teaching and best practice have never been formalized in universities and translation companies in the same way as in medicine. The lack of a truly scientific basis has left these functions in the translation sphere exposed to commercial pressures."
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