In this review, I will make a detailed description of one of the most famous online translators in Internet, that is to say Google translate. Then, we will compare it with other two translators: Yahoo Babel Fish, and Reverso.

Google Translate is a language resource which is able to translate texts, web pages and documents into different languages.

This online linguistic tool appeared on 2006 and it is one of the most used translators around the world. It was created by Google Inc.

There are two versions available of Google Translate. The first one was designed for iPhone users in 2008 and this translator cover about 23 different languages. Then, the second one was developed as an Android version which was divided mainly into two options: “ SMS translation” and “History”.

The incorporation of languages available in the translators was progressive.There were 23 stages. The first combination were English- French, English- German, and English- Spanish. Nowadays it is possible to find a different translation for the word.

METHODOLOGY The method used by Google

Translator is statistical method translation. This statistical method translation was created due to a bilingual text corpus which contained about a million words. In addition, a second corpora of a billion words is incorporated in the statistical method.

USING THE TRANSLATORTo start with, we have to choose

the languages we want to work with. There are 52.

Then we have to paste the text we have chosen to translate and paste on the box. Once we have done it, we press the button “translate” we wait until the translation appears on an open window with the translated version. If we want to translate a document, we simply press the option "translate a document”. It will appear a box with the option “examinar”. Then we have to choose the document and automatically the translator will do its job.

The translator is able to translate different types of texts available from different sources like webpages. In addition it is possible to translate personal documents with Google Translate as we can see in the image below.

Translating different types of textIn order to check the competence of the

translator, we have decided to translate two texts of different nature. The first one is a literary text, particularly a poem, in this case a sonnet written by William Shakespeare in 1609. The title of the poem is “ Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”. In the next slides we can see the original text, the translated version and my own translation:

FAILURES AND PROBLEMS Due to the automatic nature of the translator, there is a

group of errors which are repeated along the poem. When we are working with a translation tool, we have to keep in mind that it will never be the same as a human translation. In addition, it is not the same to translate a short text with easy grammatical structures and phrases than translating a long text with rhetorical figures. In this particular case, I have chosen a poem from the 15th- 16th century to prove the limitations that translators like Google Translate offer. We have to consider that languages evolve and this particular translator we are commenting on, was created in 2009 so the translation is going to be difficult. In the Basically the main mistakes made by the translator were:

Lack of translation of certain words. Probably the main reason to these mistakes was the “apostrophe”. In Spanish, “apostrophes” do not exist, so it is probable that MT is not able to recognize the words in Spanish, so it is impossible to translate them. We are talking for instance about words like “dimm´d”, “untrimm´d”, “wander’st”.

Word order. Long sentences tend to be translated in a wrong way. For example “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date” or “And every fair from fair sometime declines” which have been changed due to the leghtening of the sentences if we compare Spanish (long sentences) versus English (short sentences). In addition, we have to take in mind that the text translated is poetry so the work done by the translator is more difficult even.

Punctuation. This translator has not made many errors of punctuation. However, we can tell one which is meaningful. This is the case of the interrogative sign, which in English only appears one in opposition to Spanish which is used twice. For example, we have: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Which appears as “Voy a compararte con un día de verano?

Lack of natural language. Although the text translated is a literary text, the tone and the lexicon used is not appropriate, especially the word order.

The other text we have chosen is a journalistic text. We have decided to select this kind of text to compare the translation given by Google Translate according to the nature of texts. The text we have chosen is an article entitled: from the magazine HELLO! written in English entitled: “Pippa Middleton unwinds with former friend in Madrid”. I have also provided the translated text and my own version:

ORIGINAL TEXT

TRANSLATED VERSION

MY OWN VERSION

FAILURES AND PROBLEMS Lack of agreement. In the text translated there is a

problem with agreement, maybe due to the fact, that in English there are no visible marks which express agreement in gender and number except in the third person singular present. Even though, in third person singular the “s” does not indicate if we are talking about a woman or a man. We find many exampleslike “While her newly-married sister jetted off the to the Seychelles” translated as “Mientras que su hermana recién casados” o “the brunette beauty relaxed in the capital’s biggest park” translated as “la belleza morena relajado en el mayor parque de la ciudad”

 

Confusion between categories. The translator does not recognize words which can be used in two categories. For instance, verbs and nouns. That is the case of the word “party” in “she partied in one of the most exclusive nightclubs” translated as “ella fiesta en uno de los clubs nocturnes más exclusivos”

False friends. The translator has not made a good translation of some words like the adjective “eligible”. In English, the sense of the adjective eligible is ”somebody wealthy”, “a good person to marry with” . However, “eligible” in Spanish means “somebody who can be chosen”.

 

Problems with the translations of compounds and adjectives. The translator does not make a good job when it has to translate compounds. For instance, “party planner” which means “somebody who loves parties” is translated as “el jugador”.

Punctuation. In Spanish, “dashes” are only used when we want to reproduce a direct speech or a dialogue written. In English, they use a dash in the place of a “comma” so maybe the translator has not been able to reproduce it. For instance, “the capital’s biggest park”- the Retiro” translated as “el mayor parque de la capital- el Retiro”

Lack of certain words: The translator has not been able to translate some words like “peplum”. In addition, proper nouns like “The Penthouse” or “Fortuny” do not appear translated

Reverso Reverso is an online free translator which can be only used to translate short texts.In the same webpage there is a dictionary and a conjugation tool.

This translator tool uses Reverso Intrenet which has been developed by PROjectMT and Softtisimo.

The Reverso translator is a very useful tool for instance, to look for words when somebody receives an e-mail instead of using dictionaries or to eliminate the barriers of language when we are abroad

Reverso online translator offers several language to work with.Basically the most used are the following combinations: English- Spanish, Espanish- English, French- Spanish, Spanish- French, Spanish- German, German- Spanish, Portuguese – Spanish, English- Japanese, Rusian- Spanish etc

How to translate a short text? In order to translate we have to follow

three different steps. Firstly, we have to paste the text on the translation box and then we choose the language in which we want to translate the text. Once we have made our choice, we press the button “TRANSLATE” as we see in the following slide. We will use the sonnet 18 written by Shakespeare.

We have chosen the same texts we have worked with before, (an article and a poem) to compare the differences with Google Translator and Yahoo Babel Fish. Let’s check the translation given of the Sonnet 18:

FAILURES AND PROBLEMS Personal Pronouns: Contrary to Google translate

which has been able to translate pronouns from other century, Reverso has not translated personal pronouns. For instance, “thee” which means “you” in modern English, and “thou” in the following sentences: “Shall I compare thee with a summer’s day?” and “Thou art more lovely and more temperate” translated as ¿Compararé thee hasta un día de verano? And “Thou arte más encantador”.

 Incorrect use of past subjunctive. This translator is not able to use the subjunctive in Spanish.In the poem there are several examples which show this problem, like for instance “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see” translated as “mientras que los hombres puedan respirar o los ojos puedan ver”.

Lack of agreement subject- verb. Reverso is not able to translate in a coherent way structures in which agreement is present. For instance, “So long lives this and this gives life to thee” translated as “tan vidas largas esto y esto dan la vida a thee”. “Esto” is a third person singular pronoun in Spanish so it should be followed by a verb in third person singular, not plural.

Problems with words which can be different categories. Again we find problems with words which act as several categories like for instance “shine” which means “to glow”. In this case “the eye of heaven shines” is translated as “el ojo de brillos de cielo”. We have to assume that shines referring to the verb “to shine”

FAILURES AND PROBLEMS

Literal translation. The translator has used literal translation in some of the words as “date” which means “go out with somebody when you are in a relationship”. In Spanish, “datar” is accepted but now commonly used so it sounds a bit awkward in natural speech.

Use of brackets. This translator uses brackets to explain the meaning of some words which are not very clear. For instance, “she was spotted” translated as “ella fue manchada (descubierta) or “and there was not let-up for the party planner” as “y no había ninguna calma para el planificador de partido (parte).

Context of translation. The translator is not able to select the appropriate meaning of a certain word. It is necessary that a human brain participates in the process of translation, In this text, the word “flame” is used but not with the meaning of “llama” but with the definition of “boyfriend” or “lover”. In this text, the mistake is made in “Pippa Middleton unwinds with former flame in Madrid” as “Pippa Middleton se relaja en Madrid con su nuevo novio”.

Confusing translations and change of meaning. This translator tends to change the meaning of sentences and the tone of the context of the text. For instance, in the sentence “after her starring role” where “starring” means something positive, “somebody who has been seen as an important figure” is translated as “estrellado” which means quite the opposite, that is to say, “somebody who is not lucky”.

Misinterpretations of common expressions. In all languages there are certain expressions which are constructed in a particular way depending on their origin. For example, in the this text, the expression “and she took to the water for a boat trip” which means that “somebody has sailed in a boat” has been translated as “y ella tomo el agua” which in Spanish means to “drink water”

YAHOO BABEL FISHThis translator is an online language resource which allows to translate short texts (150 characters) and web pages. SYSTRAN is the technologycal system upon which Yahoo Babel Fish is built. The languages of translation are for instance: French, German, Italian, English, Japanese etc

We select the languages we want to work with and then we paste the text in the box. Then we press the button “translate”. We will translate and analyse the same texts than before:

TRANSLATED VERSION

FAILURES AND PROBLEMS Lack of division into paragraphs. The

translator makes its job as a block. The original text was divided into lines or small paragraphs but the translated versions is translated together.

Problems with the Saxon genitive. This translator is unable to translate the saxon genitive which is typical of English language in to Spanish. As a consequence, the text has not translated the following expression right: “some of the Spanish city’s nightlife”. The result has been “el capital parque más grande de s- el Retiro”.

Inappropriate translation of verbs. This translator has not done a good job because it has translated “she was spotted with a bottle of champagne in her bag” which mean that “she was observed or seen while she had a bottle in her bag as “ donde la mancharon con una botella de champán” which means “to get dirty”

False friends. The same as Google Translate and Reverso translator has not made a good translation of some words like the adjective “eligible”. In English, the sense of the adjective eligible is ”somebody wealthy”, “a good person to marry with” . However, “eligible” in Spanish means “somebody who can be chosen”.

Lack of translations of certain words. The translator does not work with certain words as “the next day” which should be translated as “el próximo día” o “flatmates” as “compañeros de piso”.

ORIGINAL VERSION

TRANSLATEDVERSION

Although, I am not an expert in the field of translations I think the three translators I have mentioned before offer great advantages and disadvantages. Undoubtedly, each of the translators is an automatic linguistic tool so we assume that they will probably be imperfect. As we have seen in the examples of the review, all of them show a lot of mistakes which can only be improved by the human brain. The object of our analysis, that is Google Translate, makes a lot of mistakes because it does not apply grammatical rules and change words which seem to be equivalent but they have a different meaning.

IN CONCLUSION…Although, I am not an expert in the field of

translations I think the three translators I have mentioned before offer great advantages and disadvantages. Undoubtedly, each of the translators is an automatic linguistic tool so we assume that they will probably be imperfect. As we have seen in the examples of the review, all of them show a lot of mistakes which can only be improved by the human brain. The object of our analysis, that is Google Translate, makes a lot of mistakes because it does not apply grammatical rules and change words which seem to be equivalent but they have a different meaning.

SOURCESGoogle Translate. (2011, May 20). In Wikipedia, The Free

Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:37,May 20, 2011 from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Translate

Magazine Hello. (2011, May 20). Retrieved 18:37,May 20, 2011 from http://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/201105165411/pippa-middleton-madrid-george-percy/1

Reverso Traductor Online. (2011, May 20). Retrieved 18:37,May 20, 2011 from http://www.reverso.net/text_translation.aspx?lang=ES

Shakespeare Online. (2011, May 20). Retrieved 18:37, May 20, 2011 from http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18.html

Yahoo Babel Fish. (2011, May 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Enyclopedia. Retrieved 18:37,May 20, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Babel_Fish