If the text is very straightforward
and you just want to know the gist of the content, machine translation
may work for you sometimes. But don’t ever rely on a machine
translation program totally as the subtleties and complexities of
language will certainly defeat it.
Traditionally these types of programs don’t produce the accurate
result you might be expecting, but they do sometimes produce amusing
results!
Never, ever risk using them for promotional material …
Here are a couple of amusing (but worrying!)
examples of how machine translation can get it wrong, even with
quite simple phrases.
Italian to English
- The meaning of the original Italian was “vibrant colour
pencils”. A program came up with “vibrating colour
pencils”!
English to French - A book cover
is made of toughened material so that it won’t easily
tear. The English description to be translated was “laminated
tear-proof material”.
“Tear”, as we know, has two meanings in English:
a) Tear = rip
b) Tear = the tear you cry, tear drops, etc.
Unfortunately the translation software program went for option
b) – a literal translation and failure to pick up on
context.