www.witinall.com
Your German language service
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Terms
  • AGB
  • Blog
  • Shop
  • Languages
  • Site Privacy Policy
  • Ask the Experts

Have your say...

No nasty comments, please!

email

Machine translation: why you shouldn't make it too easy for the machine.

7/26/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
#5 Punctuation

Did you know that a typo can land you in jail? Oh yes, you could end up like this poor fellow:

       Walker sorgt sich um die Sicherheit seiner Freunde und wird des Mordes beschuldigt.
      
[Walker is concerned about his friends’ safety and is charged with murder.]

And just because someone left out a pair of commas:

       Walker concerned about his friends’ safety gives himself up and is charged with murder.

In the original (source text) sentence, Walker gives himself up to the police. There is no mention of that in the translation. In fact, the translated sentence taken out of context suggests that his being concerned for his friends is the reason or cause for his being charged. (I once saw a similar sentence in which a rocket was being built, which ended up being fired (!) in the translation. More than wishful thinking.) What ever happened? 

Put the commas where they should be and the reason becomes clear (and you also get a perfectly acceptable translation): 






​


​
Losing bits of information is one of the most common ‘errors’ in automated translation, and one of the most annoying. And the reason is not always an erroneous input. Let’s look at another example, taken from the Wikipedia page on the serial comma:

       My usual breakfast is coffee, bacon and eggs and toast.

Google translates this correctly as: 
​
      Mein übliches Frühstück ist Kaffee, Speck und Eier und Toast.

What happens if we decide do add the serial comma that groups the bacon with the eggs?
​ 
       My usual breakfast is coffee, bacon and eggs, and toast.

Well,…nothing. It’s still:

       Mein übliches Frühstück ist Kaffee, Speck und Eier und Toast. 

The machine doesn’t understand cultural references of any kind. It doesn’t know how ‘bacon and eggs’ are eaten or that in German you could use the phrases ‘Eier mit Speck’ or ‘Speck mit Ei’ to indicate the proximity of the foodstuffs on the plate. All it does is look up the words, the frequency of appearance in a corpus and the most likely combination. Which is why the serial comma is simply ignored: it isn’t mandatory and so isn’t used by all speakers of English.

You can leave out commas to your heart’s content where there is no danger of a misunderstanding:

       Your new financial friends will be abstract, obsessed with numbers [,] and keen on comparing you with your                  competitors.

But (!) be aware, that the machine has a creative mind of its own and will add a little variety:

Ihre neuen finanziellen Freunde werden abstrakt sein, von Zahlen besessen und darauf bedacht sein, Sie mit Ihren Konkurrenten zu vergleichen. 

Deine neuen finanziellen Freunde werden abstrakt sein, von Zahlen besessen und darauf bedacht sein, dich mit deinen Konkurrenten zu vergleichen.

Apart from the fact that ‘financial friends’ is not normally translated as ‘finanzielle Freunde’, I don’t see why the comma should lead to the informal ‘du’ being used all of a sudden. Do you?

Commas also serve to indicate relative clauses. In the following sentence the noun ‘fingers’ is modified by a relative clause:

The flame on the match head danced and jumped in her fingers, which had yet to stop shaking.

The translation I received from one of the free programs available on the net was:

Die Flamme auf dem Spiel Kopf tanzte und sprang in den Fingern, die noch zu schütteln aufhören musste.

You had better be able to read German if you wanted to use this. Not only is ‘Spiel Kopf’ (not even a word) not even close to ‘match head’, but there is no subject-verb agreement, i.e. the number of the finite verb ‘musste’ is singular rather than plural (‘fingers’)! Well, you could always count this as a typo, I guess. ;-)

Perhaps the comma in the previous example caused some confusion. Let’s now look at the parentheses (or round brackets) and dashes indicating an interruption in the following sentence:

They don’t have to reveal their agenda (are they long or short your shares?) and try to tease out gossip with which to speculate.

translated as:
Sie müssen ihre Agenda nicht offen legen (sind sie long oder short ihre Aktien?) Und versuchen, Klatsch zu entlocken, mit dem zu spekulieren.

And with a dash (single or double):

They don’t have to reveal their agenda - are they long or short your shares? - and try to tease out gossip with which to speculate.

translated as:
Sie müssen ihre Agenda nicht offen legen - sind sie long oder short ihre Aktien? - und versuchen, Klatsch herauszupicken, mit dem man spekulieren kann.

In the second version (the one with the dashes) the ‘und’ is correctly reproduced in lower case and the clause ‘mit dem man spekulieren kann’ has the correct finite verb form ‘kann’. There is no obvious reason for the lexical variation. Perhaps you have an idea. I’d love to hear from you, so just write your comments in the field provided below. 

Picture
2 Comments
top essay writing services link
7/28/2018 04:00:00 am

I love the idea that you're talking about the importance of commas and grammar. Most of the people nowadays have forgotten the importance of having a proper grammar and they have forgotten that it reflects our personality. There is no need to be perfect, we just have to know what's right or wrong. We don't want to be judged as a person who's too proud without us having much to say. I know that we don't want to be tagged as such.

Reply
Alexandra link
8/2/2018 02:34:15 am

Hi and thank you for your comment!

Even though punctuation is really only based on conventions, it’s true that it makes life so much easier for readers. And you’ve probably heard the one about how the comma can save a person’s life.

Let’s eat grandpa.
Let’s eat, grandpa.

Find this and other fun exhibits on: http://zencopy.com/2011/11/03/punctuation-humor-a-comma-for-your-thoughts/

It’s also said that the comma is difficult to use well and that a person who has learnt to use the comma properly has learnt to write well (which is probably why machines tend to leave it out). Not only fun mis-readings (and misunderstandings), but also overly long sentences can get on your nerves. There are no prizes to be won for trying to regale us with a barrage of facts strung out in endless lists of words that make your eyes boggle and force you to make the air in your lungs stretch further, should you decide to read them out loud. (Okay, you can breathe now.)

Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but what I really want to say is that perfection is not what we need to keep in focus, but something else is: what I call ‘empathy for the reader’. Although punctuation is based on conventions, these often serve to make communication easier. So, what’s not to like about the comma (and arguing about it)?

We have a saying in German about how you should stick to what you know when you speak: “Reden, wie einem der Schnabel gewachsen ist.” In my opinion this is a wise suggestion, as it is often the attempt to become someone else in communication that can lead to havoc.

So, enjoy yourself and have a great summer!
Yours,
Alexandra

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Authors

    Alexandra
    Matthieu
    ​Sarah
    ​Samuel
    ​Summer
    ​Mike

    Archives

    January 2023
    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    August 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    October 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    September 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Link to Delicious
    English Dictionary;
Proudly powered by Weebly