March 12, 2007
The Limitations of Google Translations
I got a new set of tea cups and a teapot. Beautiful stuff, no?
Here’s a description of the teapot in Chinese followed by its Google translation:
「用我泡茶，痴而不呆」，一语诠释了这把壶的特性。中庸厚道的壶型，以紫砂土的古朴温润为坯体，施以春意盎然柔嫩的橄榄绿，犹如为千年的茶文化，注入一股新生命
“I use the tea addict without living”, a phrase interpreted this regard pot characteristics. Mean-kind pots, the ancient stone to the adobe soil in Yixing, the olive green E. imposed spring. like for the Millennium tea culture, injected new life
The original Chinese is kind of nonsense anyway, but I don’t think human translators need to fear that machines will take their jobs quite yet.
March 13th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Ray Kurzweil predicts in five years most human translators will be out of a job and that computers will dominate the field. He makes some good points about the trend. He also accurately predicted when computers would beat the best chess players years before it happened, when many others thought he was crazy.
March 13th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Ugly: Mean-kind Kurzweil’s ideas are olive green E.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:02 am
uhm..the original chinese is not nonsense, but the translation is definitely garbage.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Gav: Well, if not nonsense then it’s silly, turgid marketing drivel.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Mr. Chairman: me bet you five monies that Kurzweil’s ideas is more than just olive green E.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
People have been predicting “five more years” for machine translation forever. The basic problem is the “pig in the pen.” Pigs don’t fit in a Sharpie? Hard for computers to understand. But maybe Kurzweil knows something.
Anyway, I thought I’d try reverse engineering this translation:
“I use the tea addict without living”, a phrase interpreted this regard pot characteristics. Mean-kind pots, the ancient stone to the adobe soil in Yixing, the olive green E. imposed spring. like for the Millennium tea culture, injected new life
“I can’t live without this thing,” said one pot smoker, mistaking it for a bong. The superannuated and passive-aggressive stoner said the pot is also great for growing weed in the adobe soil of Yixing. It has breathed new life into the olive-green bong water-cum-tea sub-culture for the new millenium.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:16 am
bjk: Kurzweil has been saying 2012 for a while. If you read his book, he charts a lot of trends - it is a great read for technical traders. The trend is your friend.
March 15th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I thought the original Chinese indeed is nonsense. Pretending to be “deep” while really shallow — one of the worst offence.
March 15th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Joy: Yes, I think so too and this offense is committed over and over in modern Chinese writing. But it’s still a damn nice teapot. ;-)