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