Reply to comment

Many people think that Google Translate is the answer to all their prayers. Are they just being naïve or do they really believe that GT can replace the human translator? Debate on machine translation has been going on for decades and there is no doubt that great progress has been made in the field.  We recently read in Johnson’s blog (The Economist) that “Machine translation software may become so advanced as to render second-language learning useless”. It might well be, but allow me to be sceptical. Today, such a statement simply sounds over-optimistic. Granted: GT is the best automatic translation tool (and free for anyone to use) we’ve seen in a long time, but it still produces a lot of nonsense.  David Bellos gives a clear and enlightening explanation on how GT works in chapter 23 of his book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, published by Penguin last year. He concludes that ”you should never use GT to translate into a language you do not know very well” and that “you should use it only to translate into a language in which you are sure you can recognize nonsense”. The other chapters in the book are just as informative and stimulating for anyone interested in the field of translation and language in general. Good read.