Carpenter Reading

I thought that Carpenter’s discussion about her translation of Welcome to Mozart was very compelling because I never really thought about the difficulty of translating words such as doki doki and waku waku. There aren’t many English words that directly translate to these feelings and I loved reading about how the author thought of ways to get around these obstacles. I know that in future assignments, I will have to learn strategies in order to convey a meaning that is difficult to say in English. 

Additionally, I really enjoyed her metaphor that translation is like coloring in a coloring book. You are free to color with whatever color you like, however, you have to follow the outlines of the original picture. You cannot take out something that was there and if you change something, you have to have a reason to do it. This translation class really helped me understand the necessity of reasoning and the intention behind it. When professor Elliot tells us to write our strategy behind our translations I didn’t really understand it at first, but I then realized that you have to give reasoning behind certain changes you made in the original text. When discussing the texts other people handed in, I realized that there is an almost infinite amount of possibilities you can have to translating a text, you just need to give your thought process behind it and also understand the author’s intent.

I'm so sorry this is so late, I realized that I had this comment written down in October (I added a few things) but I somehow forgot to hand it in. 

Godayol Reading Questions

1) Godayol and Chamberlain both see a use of sexual language and metaphors in translation theory, and both propose their own respective take on the larger trends and "eras" of this history, do you agree with this? What sort of influences do you think may have resulted in such an abundance of sexual and sexist metaphors in translation studies? Do you agree with the division of these periods of time into three eras as Godayol describes them? 

2) The Third Age as Godayol describes it has introduces many terms for the middle zone that exists between the translation and the source text, different from each other in many ways. Which term for this middle zone do you prefer, and why? 

3) The retaking of myths such as Pandora's box in order to represent translation is a step forward in moving on from the sexist dialogues and metaphors of old because it can serve as a metaphor for the confusion and fear that we might have of the unknown, what other myths and legends could be reused for the same purposes? 

Hofstadter Reading

Google Translate works well I think for the general public who only want to quickly have something translated to another language that they understand. For this purpose, Google Translate is a fine translator, most of the time. However, that does not mean that Google Translate is without flaws. I agree with Douglas Hofstadter's point of Google Translate being "shallow" in the terms that it essentially takes the words at the surface level and directly translates. This sometimes results in wacky and wonky translations. This is potentially harmful as it could skew someone's understanding of a language if they were to just use Google Translate without any knowledge on the language beforehand. 

An example of a machine translation:

いつも低気圧低血圧ダブルパンチ

 I got this sentence from Twitter, and it translate directly to 

Always low pressure low blood pressure double punch

 It does quite make sense, but I feel that it is still understandable.

-June

Hofstadter Reading

 I agree that “no reasonable person thinks that a machine translation can ever achieve elegance and style,” and I agree with her statement that “translation is an incredibly subtle art that draws constantly on one’s many years of life experience, and on one’s creative imagination.” Machine translation are improved these years, but I still don’t think it can exceed the transactions by human translators. As what we’ve read last week, translators do not translate, they interpret, and machine can hardly interpret perfectly. Though sometime machine may be more accurate on word-to-word translation, I don’t think that is the most important part in translation. 

Machine Translation Example:

二十億光年の孤独

Two billion light years of loneliness

人類は小さな球の上で

Mankind is on a small sphere

眠り起きそして働き

Wake up and work

ときどき火星に仲間を欲しがったりする

Sometimes I want a companion on Mars

火星人は小さな球の上で

Martians on a small sphere

何をしてるか　僕は知らない

I don't know what you're doing

（或はネリリし　キルルし　ハララしているか）

(Or is he sick and he is sick?)

しかしときどき地球に仲間を欲しがったりする

But sometimes I want a companion on Earth

それはまったくたしかなことだ

That's quite certain

万有引力とは

What is universal gravitation?

ひき合う孤独の力である

The power of loneliness

宇宙はひずんでいる

The universe is distorted

それ故みんなはもとめ合う

Therefore everyone is clamoring for each other

宇宙はどんどん膨んでゆく

The universe is steadily expanding

それ故みんなは不安である

Therefore everyone is anxious

二十億光年の孤独に

Two billion light years of loneliness

僕は思わずくしゃみをした

I sneeze involuntarily

 

Nina

Hofstadter

 

This reading was very interesting and it is definitely such a relevant topic. For me personally, the thing that google translate is best for is when I suddenly can't remember a word in either Chinese or English and I do a quick lookup. Or when I am looking for the exact wording of something that I am forgetting. I thought that it is usually pretty accurate for single-word searches. However, throughout the process of my translation project, I realized that it definitely is good as a multi-purpose translation device and is not so good for very accurate/applicable translation of words. Jisho has a better translation most of the time with google translate being just a little bit off. I really don't think that AI could ever replace the work of a translator because language is much too multi-layered and each translator brings to the table different interpretations and understandings. Especially for much longer works AI would not be able to link together themes and motifs that could run throughout which means there needs to be particular focus on certain words etc. 

A little unrelated but this sentence really perfectly describes how I feel when I am translating. "Whenever I translate, I first read the original text carefully and internalize the ideas as clearly as I can, letting them slosh back and forth in my mind." "Slosh" is really the best word for it. 

Machine translation example from my translation project Midorikashi

新しいそうな洋風の二階建てだった。広い庭に芝生が生えていて、稲のより濃い緑色が鮮やかだった。人工芝かもしれない。私のうちの庭は、毎日草をむしっていた祖母がいなくなって草ぼうぼうになってしまった。

Google translate:

It was a new Western-style two-story building. There was a lawn in the large garden, and the darker green color of the rice was bright. It may be artificial turf. My garden has become grassy because my grandmother, who was weeding every day, is gone.

My translation:

It was a two-story western-style building that appeared quite new. It had a spacious garden with grass a vivid dark green that outshone the rice plants. Might be artificial grass. The grass in our garden had become rampant without my grandmother’s careful weeding every day.

Celine

Hofstadter Reading

 In the past I used to be worried about machine translations and what they could mean, but ultimately the limitations of the programs and algorithms used right now can in my mind only be overcome with an ability to comprehend and grasp the context in which a text finds itself in. Literal translations for one, are not always the best translation, very rarely so if I had to say so myself. And if there was an AI that could understand and process enough context to produce a translation like a human would, that is, considering factors like how the response the words it chooses to use would have on a potential reader, then in my mind there are way bigger problems to think about than human translators being obsolete. Humans in general would be obsolete if it ever came to that.

A good example would be something simple, like to be or not to be: that is the question, and from GoogleTL and DeepL are the following translations: 

生きるべきか、死ぬべきか：それが問題です

To be or not to be: that is the question

Machine translation being what it is now, mostly drawing from already existing translations, popular searches like Shakespeare default to mostly what is the most popular translations, and you can clearly see where it adds its own flair with the desu ending, which is a very odd choice for the context, while DeepL just outputs English. the following line, whether tis' nobler in mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? results in the following, from GoogleTL and DeepL, respectively: 

苦しむ心の中で気高いかどうか。 とんでもない幸運のスリングと矢、またはトラブルの海に対抗するために、そして反対することによってそれらを終わらせるために？

悩むことが心の中では尊いのか？悩む方が心の中では崇高なのでしょうか？それとも悩みの海に武器を持って立ち向かい、それを終わらせる方がいいのでしょうか？

Which, in my mind, displays the limitations of machine translation in it's current iteration. The GoogleTL translation is 95% of an already existing translation, with particles and such changed, while DeepL defaults to what it does best, word-for-word translations of nouns and verbs and recasting into English word order, except it makes a mistake and outputs the first line twice. More than anything this is likely due to the fact that GoogleTL has had more requests for that particular line than DeepL does, causing it to default to the most popular translation plus or minus a few particles, while DeepL gets none and therefore defaults to a 'proper' machine translation. 

The faults of GoogleTL are that it currently, and DeepL also to an extent, work on existing translations without full context, and without existing translation it defaults to translations that have the same problems (albeit less of them) that machine translations have always had. 

 

Steven C.

Hofstadter Reading

Hofstadter talked about how the current Google Translate cannot replace human translation. Although I agree that there is still a long way from AI translation to fully replace human translation, I wished he had explained more about the AI-translated version instead of simply saying "it makes no sense at all." For instance, the sixth oddity in the Chinese example "made no sense" as it was a direct translation. I feel it would have been more persuasive if he was able to point out these details in which how Google Translate went wrong by directly translating the words.

In addition, I also threw the original text in Hofstadter's example to Google Translate, as I was curious if there were any differences from Hofstadter's results. Google Translate still couldn't catch the gender difference in its French translation, but it was able to translate "her car" and "his car" from Hofstadter's French version. Next, Google Translate's English translation of the German text was now able to get the term "female scholars." It also translates the term in quotation marks as "odd ones" instead of "odd." Nonetheless, it still got the German Habilitation as habitation. For the Chinese example, Google Translate now had only one out of the six oddities left: the name "Yongying" was translated as "Yongxuan." However, it got "walk in the south study" for the term in quotation marks.

Despite the improvement of Google Translate, I still thought Hofstadter's version had a better flow. I liked how he said that understanding involves having ideas, and this is indeed something the current machine translation cannot achieve.

Machine Translation Examples:

吾妻照夫。享年二十八。杉並区桃井の環状八号線路上にて、乗用車に撥ねられ、四月二日に死亡。六年前に三人の女子高生を次々と誘拐、十日から二週間にわたって監禁、暴行を続け、最終的には殺害している。裁判では精神鑑定の結果、犯行時は心神喪失状態にあったと診断され、無罪になっている。

Teruo Azuma. Twenty-eight years of enjoyment. He died on April 2 after being hit by a passenger car on the Ring Road No. 8 in Momoi, Suginami-ku. Six years ago, three high school girls were kidnapped one after another, confined and assaulted for two weeks from the 10th, and eventually killed. At the trial, as a result of a psychological examination, he was diagnosed as having a state of dementia at the time of the crime and was acquitted.

やることのなくなった駅員は、自然と声かけをするようになった。通勤、通学。これから一日を始められる皆様に、少しでも元気をお分けしたい、などというおこがましい考えとは少し違った。むしろ、この仕事がサービス業であることに気づいた。その方が、心境としては近かったと思う。あるいは、退屈な業務に何かしらのやり甲斐を見出したかった、とか。

The station staff who had no choice but to speak naturally began to speak. Commuting to work or school. It was a little different from the nasty idea of wanting to give everyone a little energy to start the day. Rather, I realized that this job was a service industry. I think that was closer to my feelings. Or maybe he wanted to find something worth doing in his boring work.

もしこのまま出向いて、ちょっと調べているうちに自殺と検死結果が出たら、どうなる。殺人班の刑事は用なしになり、すごすごと本部に戻ってくる破目になる。そんなときに限って、自分たちがやるはずだった事件はもうどこか別の班に横取りされており、しかもそれがマスコミに大きく取り上げられ、拳句、派手な逮捕劇で幕を閉じたりする、かもしれないではないか。

What if I go out like this and get suicide and autopsy results while I'm doing some research? The detectives of the murder team are useless, and it becomes a breach to return to the headquarters. Only in such a case, the case that we were supposed to do has been taken over by another group, and it was taken up by the media, and the curtain was closed with fists and flashy arrest plays. Isn't it possible?

Iris