Thursday, January 20, 2011

Translation is not a commodity but a professional service that is equal parts skill, hard work and inspiration.  It’s no coincidence that a translator’s skills tend to age like fine wine.  With time and a growing repertoire, the process simply flows for an experienced linguist while the less experienced and those who do not possess the inclination toward the “art of translation” struggle.  Using the net’s top free translation service and Spanish translation, more specifically, as examples, we can show you exactly why translation is not a commodity, but an art form.

Machine translation, for anyone who has taken a piece of Spanish text longer than a few lines and put it into an online translator knows, produces a terrible result.   Machine translation cannot, not yet anyhow, capture the nuances of human language.  Take the below Spanish translation placed into Google’s free online translation service, which is widely considered to be the best.

A good Spanish translation:
Si de verdad les interesa lo que voy a contarles, lo primero que querrán saber es dónde nací, cómo fue todo ese rollo de mi infancia, qué hacían mis padres antes de tenerme a mí, y demás puñetas estilo David Copperfield, pero no tengo ganas de contarles nada de eso.

The English original:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where    I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Google translate:
If you really care what I tell you, the first thing you want to know is where I was born, how did all that stuff from my childhood, what did my parents before having me, and other style Heck David Copperfield, but I have no desire to tell any of that.

As you can see, the machine translation makes the text rightly intelligible, but is far from a good translation.  This is about the best one can get with machine translation.

Resource Box: If you are interested in a high-quality Spanish to English or English to Spanish translation, look for a professional  translation service if quality is what you are after.

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