Our house is surrounded by cats!

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 6

Beware the vagaries of online translation services.  These websites—Google Translate, freetranslation.com, babblefish…--are invaluable when you are reading the newspaper and need the meaning of one key word in order to unlock the meaning of an entire paragraph.

But watch out if you are tempted to cut and paste an entire passage into one of these translation programs.  It’s become quite obvious to me that many Spanish businesses, in pursuit of an English-speaking market—have done just this.  The result—well, you can typically get the gist of what the site is trying to communicate, but not without some confusion and humor en route.

Take what happened to me today.  In the past few years, we have become avid Homeexchange.com users.  Well, I am avid, and Alec is generally grateful for my efforts.  You can spend a lot of time on homeexchange.com.  Anyway, I have been trying to arrange an exchange in Provence for early December, when the kids have a few days off from school.  Montpellier is only a 3 hour drive, and seems like a good place to go.  So I sent several proposals to folks with homes in Montpellier, and was delighted today to receive a response from an interested exchanger.  In an effort to be helpful, the sender of the following email clearly put it through a translation system:

Hello

Thank you to your proposal that we accept with pleasure.

This project we like, even if an exchange of longer duration (in Barcelona or New York ...) we'd also interested.

Start this exchange on 3 suits us.

We arrive on time that would suit you (but not early!) If you want to welcome us in your apartment before your departure.

Or conversely, if you come to us for our departure.

Swap key on the road as possible.

Or another form ....

End of exchange on 8 suits us.

At this time we do not know if we have two or if our 9 year old daughter will be with us.

Our house is surrounded by cats. To avoid allergic to ...

We expect you to read.

Cordially

A recent Op-Ed piece by David Bellos in the New York Times (“I, Translator” March 20, 2010) takes a close look at this problem.  Apparently, these translation tools do not simply translate text literally, word by word, but go out and search for passages to see how particular words and phrases are used in context.  The more examples the tool can find, the more accurate the translation is likely to be (kind of like the face recognition feature of iPhoto).  At least in theory.  So it would seem to make sense that more widely used languages, like English and Chinese and Spanish, would result in better translations than, say, Catalan, which is only spoken by 11 million people.  However the above example shows that even a simple French-English translation can go awry.  When I read the message from the Provence homeowners, I was sitting at my desk, within earshot of the office administrator.  I snorted and started laughing so hard I am sure she thought I was nuts.  And my Spanish is not nearly good enough for me to have explained what was so funny.  The author of the Times article argues that it will be a long time before human translators will be rendered obsolete by mere software.  I agree. 

I should mention that Alec is allergic to cats, so although the house in Provence looks pretty nice, I need to find out if it is, truly, surrounded by cats.