CRIKET, THOSE PESKY CHINESE ARE MAD
March 16th 2007 04:55
CRIKEY, IT'S ALL IN THE TRANSLATION
Crikey.com ran this excerpt today from an item from China’s TYNews agency about George Bush’s drinking problem and what it’s doing to his marriage:
“President Bush faced with the marital crisis, the fatigue pulls wants to divorce once more with excessive drinking Bush! This news by the American well-known Eight Diagrams magazine as the title page was round the world reported promotes on 29th. American first family really faced with crisis?
“According to US "Round the world" the magazine reported that, Mr. and Mrs. Bush's close friend disclosed, after their last because Bush excessive drinking quarrels, each other again did not speak. Although in front of the public situation or the camera, they also maintains is being intimate condition.
“The fatigue pulls also is displays to the husband the support, but two people actually are in private are indifferent relatively. A Bush nearly for more than year comes, faced with the pressure is more and more big.”
And on it goes for four more paragraphs.
Crikey of course played it deadpan, commenting simply “We thought you’d like to know,” and headlining the piece, “Bush to have to divorce the common people certainly not nice,” a parody which ironically echoes Wolcott Gibbs’ parody of Time magazine’s unusual syntax, “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.”
Time’s at-times odd syntax has been shown the door this week in a major revamp of the doddering US publication, but back to Crikey’s piece.
There is of course an inherent snicker value in the apparent dumbness of the writing, which inevitably detracts from the credibility of the item, which is in this case is not invented in some mad Charlie-Chan Oriental mind but is allegedly gleaned from US magazines.
But it isn’t the original Chinese writer who has made this dumb mess of our fine language, it’s actually the translator, and Crikey reveals the item comes “Thanks to the wonder that is Babelfish.”
Babelfish is AltaVista’s translation service, and this week it came under fire from the Poynter Institute for the wretched quality of its translations, a fact already known to MediaBlab who suffered serious fallout when relying on it to translate English-to-French for an intimate love letter to a comely restaurateur in the south of France.
European-born Fons Tuinstra, a Chinese resident posted comments on Poynter’s site claiming that Babelfish’s translations have only about a 10 percent accuracy.
Tuinstra is a founder and partner of the largest email-service/website on business in China, a blogger at www.chinaherald.net, co-founder and 2002 president of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club (2002); and author (2003/4) of the book: The Wild East. Fifteen misunderstandings about China and the Chinese (in German and Dutch.)
Tuinstra said that Google’s new Language Tools online translation service is much better, and rated by Chinese linguists as about 60 percent accurate, and, compared to Babelfish, actually “makes some sense” although Google’s Chinese translations still read like the Xinhua news report.
Tuinstra added, “The problem is that Chinese has many homonyms, and translation software usually picks the most commonly used characters, which are not always correct. Also, translation software often does not know where to end or where to begin a Chinese sentence.
”This might be an interesting experiment: Google's translator allows you to suggest corrections. When people start doing so, its accuracy might improve over time.”
Tuinstra tried his won experiment, pushing a block of Chinese language text through Babelfish and this is the result on his system:
“When you turn to this page, believed your judgement certainly can for a long time pause in here. Here person you a definite opinion, when you hurriedly pass through underground hard the channel, when handle matters you to some government office building, perhaps some quoin has their form, they in your nonchalant Yu Guangli, in your in a hurry being amazed. They are long-time are plaintive, grief and indignation group of people, they changed the life path because of some accident, rushes about to the hometown and the metropolis, tenaciously pursues one by one a view, a fair dream. They are tenacious and the optimistic crowd, they day after day are disappointed, persisted year after year, throughout is persevering our nationality several millenniums comes to ‘the blue sky’ and ‘the world innate justice’ a belief.”
He then reported that this is what “the humans at Global Voices” made of the text:
“‘As you scroll down this page, what you see will make you stop and look. The people here you’ve surely seen before, as you hurry through underground corridors, as you stop by government buildings to take care of matters, or in some corner, you see their shadow out of the corner of your eye, which astonishes you as you rush. They are a group of long-sorrowful, long-grieving people, the course of whose lives have been changed by some accident, rushing about their hometowns and the city, doggedly pursuing a verdict, a dream of justice. They are both an obstinate and optimistic group, disappointed day after day, persevering year after year, all along holding on to our people’s millennia-old faith in ‘blue sky’ and ‘justice in the world’.”
Crikey.com ran this excerpt today from an item from China’s TYNews agency about George Bush’s drinking problem and what it’s doing to his marriage:
“President Bush faced with the marital crisis, the fatigue pulls wants to divorce once more with excessive drinking Bush! This news by the American well-known Eight Diagrams magazine as the title page was round the world reported promotes on 29th. American first family really faced with crisis?
“According to US "Round the world" the magazine reported that, Mr. and Mrs. Bush's close friend disclosed, after their last because Bush excessive drinking quarrels, each other again did not speak. Although in front of the public situation or the camera, they also maintains is being intimate condition.
And on it goes for four more paragraphs.
Crikey of course played it deadpan, commenting simply “We thought you’d like to know,” and headlining the piece, “Bush to have to divorce the common people certainly not nice,” a parody which ironically echoes Wolcott Gibbs’ parody of Time magazine’s unusual syntax, “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.”
Time’s at-times odd syntax has been shown the door this week in a major revamp of the doddering US publication, but back to Crikey’s piece.
There is of course an inherent snicker value in the apparent dumbness of the writing, which inevitably detracts from the credibility of the item, which is in this case is not invented in some mad Charlie-Chan Oriental mind but is allegedly gleaned from US magazines.
Babelfish is AltaVista’s translation service, and this week it came under fire from the Poynter Institute for the wretched quality of its translations, a fact already known to MediaBlab who suffered serious fallout when relying on it to translate English-to-French for an intimate love letter to a comely restaurateur in the south of France.
European-born Fons Tuinstra, a Chinese resident posted comments on Poynter’s site claiming that Babelfish’s translations have only about a 10 percent accuracy.
Tuinstra is a founder and partner of the largest email-service/website on business in China, a blogger at www.chinaherald.net, co-founder and 2002 president of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club (2002); and author (2003/4) of the book: The Wild East. Fifteen misunderstandings about China and the Chinese (in German and Dutch.)
Tuinstra said that Google’s new Language Tools online translation service is much better, and rated by Chinese linguists as about 60 percent accurate, and, compared to Babelfish, actually “makes some sense” although Google’s Chinese translations still read like the Xinhua news report.
Tuinstra added, “The problem is that Chinese has many homonyms, and translation software usually picks the most commonly used characters, which are not always correct. Also, translation software often does not know where to end or where to begin a Chinese sentence.
”This might be an interesting experiment: Google's translator allows you to suggest corrections. When people start doing so, its accuracy might improve over time.”
Tuinstra tried his won experiment, pushing a block of Chinese language text through Babelfish and this is the result on his system:
“When you turn to this page, believed your judgement certainly can for a long time pause in here. Here person you a definite opinion, when you hurriedly pass through underground hard the channel, when handle matters you to some government office building, perhaps some quoin has their form, they in your nonchalant Yu Guangli, in your in a hurry being amazed. They are long-time are plaintive, grief and indignation group of people, they changed the life path because of some accident, rushes about to the hometown and the metropolis, tenaciously pursues one by one a view, a fair dream. They are tenacious and the optimistic crowd, they day after day are disappointed, persisted year after year, throughout is persevering our nationality several millenniums comes to ‘the blue sky’ and ‘the world innate justice’ a belief.”
He then reported that this is what “the humans at Global Voices” made of the text:
“‘As you scroll down this page, what you see will make you stop and look. The people here you’ve surely seen before, as you hurry through underground corridors, as you stop by government buildings to take care of matters, or in some corner, you see their shadow out of the corner of your eye, which astonishes you as you rush. They are a group of long-sorrowful, long-grieving people, the course of whose lives have been changed by some accident, rushing about their hometowns and the city, doggedly pursuing a verdict, a dream of justice. They are both an obstinate and optimistic group, disappointed day after day, persevering year after year, all along holding on to our people’s millennia-old faith in ‘blue sky’ and ‘justice in the world’.”
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