Friday, October 14, 2011

Dr. Victor Mair at Language Log has a nice piece on how Google Translate became the de facto tool for anyone wants to communicate in a foreign language.  Even though in some cases, translation it provided are incorrect. 

This young man holding the sign at "Occupy Wall Street", probably wanted "No More Corruption".  However, Google Translate gave him "There isn't any more corruption."

By the way, why is he holding a sign written in Chinese?! 
Has this naive young man ever done business in China?
How about 關係, 後門, and 紅包?

7 comments:

  1. I think the reason he is holding a sign in Chinese is that (it is said, I haven't checked the facts, and I'm not American) the USA has become increasingly in debt as a result of its economic policies, and much of that debt is now in Chinese hands. Many Americans fear that the debts will force the USA to yield to China on various matters of policy against its own interests, or to put it in street terms "We'll all have to speak Chinese here if this goes on".

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  2. I've heard the suggestion that they do so in case they appear in television coverage of the event in China.

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  3. It's an unfortunate translation, since in English, "no more corruption" as an isolated phrase lacks the context to establish whether it is being stated in the prohibitive sense (e.g., "stop corruption"), or in the indicative sense (e.g., "there is no corruption"). A semantics-preserving translation would require an unambiguous starting phrase, such as "eliminate corruption" (清除腐敗 or 排斥腐敗). I'm not sure what the PRC or the average Chinese citizen thinks of the OWC protests in a political/economic sense, but seeing as how there exist superficial commonalities in both countries' widening wage gaps and increasing class tensions, it wouldn't surprise me if the state-owned media in China were more circumspect about reporting on such matters for fear of encouraging similar dissent and protests.

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  4. There are many many websites, actually having different language versions simply by having a link at Google Translate, in spite of having properly translated pages. You should have seen some atroticies I have seen.

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  5. Protest signs in Chinese may be a new trend. Mr. Mair noted a few popping up in Egypt as well (surprisingly good ones, in fact, though not without errors).

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  6. @Herouth: Great. If that happens, does that mean the time I've spent learning Japanese will be moot? 中国語が話せません。。。 And I doubt my progress in Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" will carry over into "Remembering the Hanzi"...

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  7. Look, yet ANOTHER example of the level of intelligence exemplified by the participants in the OWC fiasco...

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