Since the use of automated machine translations has been made more accessible, we often see or read of some type of translation gaffe. Sometimes mistranslation are merely anecdotal, other times they can be serious and offensive blunders.
In 2010 the online periodical Kazakhstan Today was unable to convey its intended meaning through a machine-translated English article without producing a few chuckles. The article discussed how Kazakhstan’s former president felt the country was not passing gas the way it should. While intending to report national news on energy, this short, two-paragraph article made four separate references to the important issue of “passing gas.” Months later, the periodical altered the translation and removed the offending phrase.
In 2007 a group of Israeli journalists used a translation engine to send an email message to the Dutch Consulate in Tel Aviv. They wanted to discuss an upcoming visit to The Netherlands for a seminar on Dutch politics, but they ended up asking the minister several nonsensical questions about his mother, including her sleeping arrangements.
Machine translation can be useful in certain cases, for instance, the U.S. Government has used computers to quickly translate millions of pages of potential terrorist chatter, which are then searched in English to identify key documents that then require high-quality human translation for added certainty. Legal service firms do the same to identify potential evidence from thousands of documents in a foreign language, which saves months of time and millions of dollars.
The use of low-quality translations, can be effective to get the gist or to scour documents for certain keywords and subjects. But when a quality end product is needed, then human translation is needed. The experts must come into the scene and apply their knowledge.
Could there be any other ways to make an effective use of machine translation? Perhaps we could find a pedagogical use for it. What if we use them with the purpose of helping us to learn another language? Sites such as Google Translation are increasingly becoming more and more sophisticated. We can learn short sentences and vocabulary, but even more, if we understand the mechanisms of how a language works, we can even detect where and if there are any syntax or grammar mistakes. By learning to identify and then correct these mistakes we reinforce and increment our knowledge of the language. Find out the mistake in a sentence and correcting it tends to be one of the exercises that any student of a second language does as part of their learning. Activities which include translation sites can be built into the class or homework. After all, students will use them, but the key is to enable them to use them correctly and to their advantage.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/07/babel_fish_insults_dutch_foreign_minister/
Pilar Gray Carlos