During a France Culture programme broadcast on 12 January 2012, the witty radio presenter Philippe Meyer spoke about an all-too-common event for anyone with an inbox: reading spam. While the dozen spam e-mails we may receive on a daily basis find their way – somewhat automatically – into the trash, it can be quite amusing to skim through them once in a while.
Meyer did just that. He was fascinated by what he refers to as an “American” message, which praised the merits of cosmetic products with rejuvenating qualities. In addition to the e-mail’s relatively approximate targeted marketing, Meyer found his attention being drawn to its content.
“Lorsque les personnes accèdent à certain âge, ils réalisent que le procès de vieillir est rampant sur eux” (back translation: “when people access a certain age, they realise that the legal proceedings are grovelling to them”). Meyer read out this fine specimen of an e-mail which had obviously been literally translated from English into French by a piece of translation software.
Automatic translation software, which translates word-for-word, fails to distinguish the primary meaning of a word and cannot restructure sentences. Meyer referred to such devices as “computer-assisted unintelligibility” tools, which can, albeit unsurprisingly, result in complete gobbledygook and tarnish the image of companies who do not care about the quality of their messages.
Meyer quoted another rather funny translation taken from a multi-national online music store. The English website sells Schubert’s “Quintet for Pianos and Strings”, which most French people know as “Quintet pour pianos et cordes”. However, on the French page of the website, you can buy Schubert’s “Quintet pour pianos et ficelles” (back translation: “Quintet for pianos and lengths of string” or – better still – “Quintet for pianos and French sticks”). It is quite safe to assume that Schubert did not use instruments made from freshly baked French bread…
While automatic translation programmes can be used to help understand the overall meaning of a text or paragraph, they’re quite yet up to replacing the “specialist human beings” referred to by Meyer. In reality, automatic translation and professional translation are not in any way in competition, since they are used for entirely different purposes.
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