Machine Translations

Written by eklastic

I am sometimes impressed how far machine translations have come. This is when we’re talking English-German. I still find faults and errors and particularly the nuances often get lost which is where machine translations can be dangerous and I am therefore an advocate for human translators, still.

But when other languages are involved the results can often be complete gobble-di-gook. This morning I got the following message: “Vergiss es, ich drehe den Filter hinter mir her.” More or less: “Forget it, I turn the filter behind me.”

It took me a bit but I pride myself in understanding what the Arabic speaking student wanted me to say. He really meant:

“Forget me coming to class today.” or rather: “Sorry, I cannot come to class today.”

“I am having problems with breathing and I have to carry a breathing apparatus with me at all times.”

Now I know this because I know the student, I know that he has breathing issues and he once told me about a respirator he needs to use occasionally. This knowledge replaces my lack of Arabic, I could make a logical deduction and infer meaning where the machine only produced gobble-di-gook.

Ragtag Daily Prompt: Gobbledigook

12 thoughts on “Machine Translations”

  2. It’s just as well autocorrect doesn’t help with translations, you’d have no hope of it getting the right words in the right order! Well done getting the Arabic I wouldn’t know where to start.
    I hope your lungs improve soon.

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