I had a similar experience with a local company who tried to establish a
business in China. The president of the company was playing with a software
and translate business documents with it. Of course he run into problem and
try to get my help. I couldn't believe how much the meaning of the text was
misinterpleted, and told him jokingly: " If you translate the word
'republican' into Chinese and back into English again with your program, it
might be turned into 'democrat' ".

-----Original Message-----
From: UTC Staff E-Mail List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Pedro Campa
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 9:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [UTCSTAFF] j Word Language Translator


>I recently discovered that Word 2005 can translate words and phrases into
>French, Spanish and/or German (I'm sure it does many others but...).  I was
>wondering if anyone in cyberspace knows how effective this tool is (I know
>very little Spanish and no French but needed an 'official' translation of a
>popular phrase).  Could I use it to translate something and not get laughed
>at for my poor use of French?
>
>I suppose if you didn't know about it and it is great, it might be worth
>noting since it may serve as yet another way for students to cheat at their
>homework.
>
>Thanks
>Melissa

M: Machine-generated translations are unreliable
and often yield grotesque and puzzling results.
Translation programs are useful for  the  fully
-bilingual professional translator in that they
offer consistency in the translation of long
texts in  technical fields. The resulting
translation however will still have to be
adjusted and edited by the translator in order to
get a reasonable facsimile of the target
language. In my Department, we are constantly
beset by requests to edit  machine-translated
texts. We usually have to inform the people in
question that their translation is illegible and
incomprehensible to a native speaker of the
language, at any level. You can view some
examples of bad Spanish translations in the City
of Chattanooga web page.
Recently we edited the Spanish text for the
Chattanooga Aquarium tourist flyer. The well
meaning, albeit ignorant translator, rendered
"alligator snapping turtle" as tortuga
come-caimanes, "alligator-eating turtle." The
classic legendary example of bad Spanish
translation is in a promotion ad for a major
airline. The company wanted to underline the
luxuriousness to their first class accommodations
to Puerto Rico. The ad began with " Sit down in
leather....." which the machine dutifully
translated as "Siéntese en  cuero" which means
"sit down naked.." As you can see we can tell
when students use machine translations. Enough of
this; you get the idea. A good source for
accurate translations of proverbial phrases and
expressions is a good encyclopedic dictionary. We
have many in our library.  P.C.