Hydraulisk get

(English version below)

Prins Carl Filip har dumpat sin fästmö, Blondin-Bella har haft 18-års kalas och lyckats tjäna pengar på det. Och själv har jag tagit bort min Port-a-Cath. Och i bruset från alla dessa stora, internationella och historiska händelser måste jag försöka hitta något vettigt att skriva om.

Google translate (http://translate.google.com/) sprang jag på för en tid sedan.

Översättningsverktyg på nätet brukar annars inte hålla så hög standard. Men den här verkar vara rätt ok. Särskilt om man vill kolla upp ett enstaka ord eller korta fraser.

När jag arbetade på IBM för många år sedan hade vi en avdelning som arbetade med naturligt språk interface till relationsdatabaser, så förutom att vi hade en massa datanördar så fanns där också en massa språknördar. De berättade bland annat om några tidiga försök att översätta ordet ”water buffalo” från engelska till tyska till ryska och sedan tillbaka till engelska och resultatet blev ”hydraulic goat”. Kul, men jag vet inte hur mycket sanning det låg i det. Risken med alla sådana här verktyg är att man utarmar språket.

Jag tog den första meningen i det första kapitlet av ”Posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club” av Charles Dickens.

“The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice Discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.”

Och körde den genom översättningsverktyget och fick:

”Den första dager som illumines den dysterhet, och konverterar till en bländande BRILJANS att otydlighet i vilken det äldre historia av offentliga karriär i odödlig Pickwick skulle vara inblandade, härrör från genomläsning av följande post i Transaktioner av den Pickwick Club, som redaktör för dessa papper känns det högsta nöje i om innan hans läsare, som ett bevis på att uppmärksamma, outtröttlig assiduity och trevlig diskriminering, som hans söka bland de mångahanda handlingar anförtrodde honom har utförts.”

Å andra sidan, om man inte ens lyckas översätta en användarmanual till videon med hjälp av översättningsverktyg, så lär väl ingen klara Dickens heller.

English Version (not translated using google)

Prince Carl Philip has dumped his fiancee, Blondin-Bella has had her birthday party and managed to make money from it. And, of course, I have had my Port-a-Cath removed. So among all these big global, life changing events among others, I must try to find something sensible to write about.

Some time ago, I found Google translate (http://translate.google.com/). It has probably been around for quite some time, but I am a bit slow some times. Translation tools on the net usually is not that good. But this one seems quite ok. Especially if you want to check out the odd word or a short phrase.

When I worked at IBM some 20 years ago, we had a department working with natural language interface to relational databases (i.e, natural language to SQL). So, beside a lot of computer nerds we also had a lot of language nerds. They told me about one of the early tests that had been made in the area. They had taken the word “Water Buffalo” and translated from English to German to Russian and then back to English (or something of that kind), and it came out as “hydraulic goat”. Funny, but I do not know how true the story is. But I think that tools like these may impoverish or oversimplify the language.

Just to test google, I took the first sentence of the first chapter of the “Posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club” by Charles Dickens and put it through the translation tool, translating it from English to Swedish and then back again:

“The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice Discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.”

And after translating it back and forth:

“The first day of Illumina the gloom, and converts into a dazzling BRILLIANCE that vagueness in which the earlier history of public career of the immortal Pickwick would be involved, derived from perusal of the following item in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, as the editor of this paper is the maximum pleasure in before his readers, as evidence that attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, as his search among the diverse range of documents entrusted to him have been carried out.”

But on the other hand, if you have ever read an English user guide for an Asian VCR, you can understand why they will never be able to correctly translate Dickens.