We’re always being asked “why can’t I just use Google Translate/Babelfish/[insert name of machine translation tool here] instead? It’s free!” Where do I start?…

Well, it’s true of translation as much as of anything else: you do get what you pay for. So if you are paying nothing for your translation, you can guess how good (or not) it’s likely to be.

The free automated translation tools can sometimes be very useful for getting an understanding of the text. But if you intend on publishing the text, this is the last thing you would want to use as the automated translations are very literal.
For example, there’s nothing French about french fries, but a translation machine doesn’t know that and you could end up with a very odd text!

Machine or online translation tools are exactly that: a useful tool for trained linguists, or just to get a vague idea of what something is about, but are no substitute for human expertise and experience. A machine will not accurately translate anything more than the simplest phrases, and we’ve all seen the results when what comes out is totally wrong!
If you want to publish or use the text you are translating for any serious purpose, then steer well clear - don’t make your company or brand a laughing stock by cutting corners.
This is not a machine translation-bashing post, in fact I, like many linguists, am intrigued to see how this technology continues to develop, and use it frequently myself as one of several tools to help when I do need to use or understand something in a foreign language.

However, every tool has its correct and proper use – try using a hammer instead of a small screwdriver to repair your glasses, and you’ll soon see what I mean.

Machine translation is a really quick and handy way to decipher emails, websites you are browsing, and similar short snippets where your aim is to get a vague understanding. These tools work best at translating short standard or formulaic phrases, as these are things that can be taught to a machine in the form of rules.

Anything longer than a phrase or short sentence, and you will find that a translation machine will struggle to produce anything coherent.

We put machine translation to the test while working on improvements to our Email-translation.com technology.

Currently, the Free and Light versions of Email-translation.com we offer use automated/machine translation to translate incoming messages.

Here are the detailed results of our findings:

In the pdf comparison you can see red for wrong translated segments, yellow for mistranslations due to wrongly identifying the word order in English, and purple for things that shouldn’t have been translated (as they are company names, book titles…) or things that have not been translated and should’ve been.

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This - the second guest posting on our company blog – comes from Spanish translator Carlos Montilla. Unsurprisingly, given the subject of his post, tourism is one of his specialisms but here he recounts a tale from his recent trip to Peru in near native English: cheers Carlos!

Spanish from Peru

Puno is a city in south Peru located on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake. Puno’s access to the lake is surrounded by some 40 man-made floating islands inhabited by the Uros people. The Uros people live on these islands and depend on the lake and tourism for their survival. We took a boat with members of a Chivay Cultural Association and their families and disembarked at one of the islands, where part of the Uros community welcomed us.

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Daniel Rajkumar will be presenting a seminar on 8th July, as part of a programme organised by Regional Language Network Yorkshire & Humber

Do you want to take your business to the world?

Do you want to learn the language of your customer?

Businesses proactive in their use of foreign languages achieve on average 45% more export sales.

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Web Translation was proud to be involved in the first ever European SME week in Brussels last week.

Here’s a video including Cassandra Oliver talking about multilingualism in Europe:

 
Cassandra was one of 5 people from SMEs across Europe invited to participate in a series of events as part of the first European SME week.  This included a round-table discussion on how important languages are to businesses in the EU, opportunities and obstacles created by a multilingual Europe, and what can be done to improve the way that small businesses handle such issues,web or blog translation.

The panel discussion in the video above was the culmination of the event, which also featured a gallery of successful EU entrepreneurs, and an art installation entitled “How it feels to be an entrepreneur“, created by Dieter Michael Grohmann- blog translation specialist.

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Google.co.ma, the Moroccon domain occupied by search engine giants Google, was temporarily whipped from within their control by a group of hackers on Saturday May 9th. It appears their only motive was to show it could be done, and bask in hacker glory at having had the skills to do it.

Pakistan hackers from pakbugs.com left their forum aliases on the google.co.ma homepage, along with a message congratulating themselves. The cyber coup lasted long enough for screenshots to be taken, but the site was relatively quickly re-assumed by Google, who are unsure how it happened.

It is alleged that hackers found a way into NIC.ma, which controls the DNS for the country, and specifically went after the Google domain which was, once taken over, pointed to a different server and left showing the hackers’ calling card. Moroccon users who tried to access their local Google were re-directed to Google.com until the embarrasing issue was resolved.

Rumour has it that this isn’t the first time Google has found itself victim of internet crime, with Google Algeria and Google Pueto Rico also falling under the command of some ‘net miscreants recently.

It seems nothing is safe, even the internet’s most dominant force.

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Premail - Probably the most useful app in the App store.

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock in the last few months you’ll know that the big thing in development right now is the iPhone Application store.  Apps such as iPint, BubbleWrap (yes, you can actually pop bubbles with your fingers!), and flatulence games have helped push Apple’s App Store over the billion-mark in just nine months.

There are now over 25, 000 unique apps - making it very difficult to stand out from the crowd - but Web Translation think that localization is the way forward. To get familiar with the Software Development Kit (SDK) Web Translations developers have created a useful application of their own, and have aptly named it ‘Premail’.

Premail allows a user to quickly create email or blog using prewritten templates.  It uses the normal mail application and so doesn’t need any configuring: simply choose a template, input some variables, make any final ammends and send.  Simple.  It’s great when you’re on the go and just want to quickly say thanks or recognise someone’s effort.

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Web-Translations will be exhibiting at Internet World next week - from 28-30 April.

Alongside all the expertise and information you’d usually get by speaking to our staff, we’ll also be running some demonstrations, and showcasing recent work that we’re proud of.

Come and see us at stand E3001, just to the left of the main Earl’s Court 2 entrance.

You can register online to attend Internet World for free at www.internetworld.co.uk/register

See you there! It’s going to be a great show…

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Having shelled out money, time, and other resources on getting a web translation done, it’s important to choose the right person to review it if this step is part of your process. An inexperienced or overzealous reviewer can change the meaning of the text entirely, or introduce errors if they are rushed or their written skills in that language are inadequate.

There’s a delicate balance that must be struck between the translator’s knowledge of their language, and the client reviewer’s knowledge of their company and products. So who is the best choice as a reviewer?

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Have you heard 50 Cent’s latest track? It’s called ‘Captcha’ and it’s about what happens if the police find you.

April Fools! Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is based on the word “capture”, and although it does sound like it could be on a rap album, a ‘captcha’ is most often a set of squiggly letters you have to type in a box to prove to a machine that you are not a machine. Half of the time I get them wrong, which is why I was really intrigued when I found a few on the net recently that did not involve distorted or twisted letters.

Here are 2 to test your French: (answers hidden in glossary under Captcha)

When adding a comment to a blog, I found a captcha which asked “What city does David live in?” The answer was included in the blog title, so it took non-artificial intelligence to figure it out, but it didn’t involve straining my eyes to figure out if something was a lower case “L” or a “1″. If you know of any fun captchas, please share!

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Oh dear, who did that translation for you, Hillary? Next time, give us a call!

If you haven’t seen the latest US foreign relations gaffe on the news, have a look at youtube - it really is quite funny! Hillary Clinton, in an attempt to improve US/Russian relations, had a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, and presented him with a gift in front of a room full of reporters. The red button on a black and yellow base was supposed to say ‘reset’ in English and Russian, and was intended to be symbolic of Russia and the US restarting their relationship.

Clinton: “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?”

Lavrov: “You got it wrong; this says ‘peregruzka,’ which means overcharged.”

Ooops!

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