{"id":7045,"date":"2011-05-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/2011\/05\/05\/when-machine-translation-backfires-in-chinese\/"},"modified":"2021-07-29T09:57:53","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T09:57:53","slug":"when-machine-translation-backfires-in-chinese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/2011\/05\/05\/when-machine-translation-backfires-in-chinese\/","title":{"rendered":"When Machine Translation Backfires in Chinese"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been long discussed whether machine translation<\/a> (MT) is reliable and if MT can replace “human translation” in the near future. As this blog shows, MT is not a good solution for “quick translation,” especially if critical business or diplomatic relations are at stake.<\/p>\n

CAT (Computer Assisted Translation<\/a>) has greatly changed traditional human translation models with improved translation efficiency, reducing overall language translation cost<\/a>. \u00a0However, Machine Translation (MT) still has many limitations that current technologies cannot yet resolve:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Text and context analysis<\/li>\n
  2. Grammar mapping and sentence re-structure<\/li>\n
  3. Crossing-culture meaning<\/li>\n
  4. Emotional meaning of text<\/li>\n
  5. Hidden meaning of text, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In light of the limitations listed above, machine translation should only be used in conjunction with corrective human editing. Although MT can sometimes be effective for high volume, repetitious content that uses a highly constrained vocabulary, it is all too often used for short translations “out of context.”<\/p>\n

    Machine translation used at the wrong time<\/h4>\n

    In spite of this, there has been a trend with more and more companies using MT for short phrases and short sentence translations. \u00a0Although phrases and short sentences require less context analysis, less grammar mapping and sentence re-structure, even with very short sentences, it still can be quite challenging for MT to get an accurate translation.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Malaysia’s government is still humiliated by its inaccurate translation on the backdrop on the welcoming ceremony for Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao<\/a> and his entourage during a recent visit. The welcome message (Official welcoming ceremony in conjunction with official visit of His Excellency Wen Jiabao to Malaysia<\/a>) was bilingual in Malay: “Istiadat Sambutan Rasmi Sempena Lawatan Rasmi TYT Wen Jiabao Ke Malaysia” \u00a0and Chinese “\u6b63\u5f0f\u6b22\u8fce\u4eea\u5f0f\uff0c\u4e0e\u4ed6\u4e00\u8d77\u6e29\u5bb6\u5b9d\u9601\u4e0b\u7684\u6b63\u5f0f\u8bbf\u95ee\u9a6c\u6765\u897f\u4e9a”. Unfortunately, the translation into the Chinese language<\/a> made absolutely no sense.<\/p>\n

    People soon found out that the translation was from machine translation.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    This is not the only case. Currently, there is another “joke” circulating amongst Chinese web users. In a promotional banner, the English translation of Chinese AD words ‘\u4e0d\u51fa\u5408\u80a5\uff0c\u901b\u904d\u4e16\u754c (visit the whole world within Heifei)’ turned to be ‘No HeiFei\uff0cGuangbian World’. (Google’s MT)<\/p>\n

    Moreover, can you guess what ‘To Male Service’ is that ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China<\/a>) offers? Business service!<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Another machine translation mistake is quite evident on the trash can sign below. ‘NO MAY RECLAIM’ should actually be ‘not recyclable’.<\/p>\n

    Machine translation “cost savings” may be lost in embarrassment<\/h4>\n

    Obviously, our list of examples could be even longer. In summary, even for short phrases, we cannot relay on machine translation alone for accurate translation. Human editing and translation cannot be completely replaced, at least for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It has been long discussed whether machine translation (MT) is reliable and if MT can replace “human translation” in the near future. As this blog shows, MT is not a good solution for “quick translation,” especially if critical business or diplomatic relations are at stake. CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) has greatly changed traditional human translation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1518,92,223,1430,1016,26,1199,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7045"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32512,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7045\/revisions\/32512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalizationpartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}