Comparing Machine Translators: Japanese to English

Machine translation

Machine translators (MTs) are computer software that produce automatic translations from one natural language to another, more or less efficiently. They are programmed by linguists to follow specific grammar rules, and employ large lexicons and corpora databases to be informed of statistics on the usage of vocabulary and expressions of each language. MTs are, therefore, usually capable of dealing with basic sentences appropriately, but generate less accurate results when given complex texts.

Machine translation can be helpful when we want to understand a foreign text approximately, but, at least as of today, computers are nowhere near as reliable as human translators nor even nonprofessional bilinguals. Because MTs do not have a mind of their own, they cannot recognize nor capture context-specific connotations, cultural items, puns, etc., nor are able to always choose the right meaning when rendering polysemic words.

Common errors in different MTs

To show some examples of the typical problems found when translating with a machine, we will be checking the results produced by a few free and online -that is to say, the most accessible to everyone- MTs, in an attempt to informally evaluate them. We will take a short text in Japanese and compare the different translations into English that each MT comes up with.

Original text and human translation:

アイザック・アシモフ（1920年1月2日 – 1992年4月6日）はアメリカの作家、生化学者。非常に成功した多作の作家であり、その著作は500冊以上を数える。 彼の扱うテーマは科学、言語、歴史、聖書等々非常に多岐にわたる が、特にSF、一般向け科学解説書、推理小説によってよく知られている。

「『夜来たる』は、わたしのプロ作家としての経歴の中で、一つの転換点となった作品である（中略）突然、私は重要な作家と見なされ、SF界が私の存在に注目するようになった。何年か後には、わたしはいわゆる”古典”を書いたことがはっきりした」

Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American author and biochemist. He was an extremely successful prolific writer, whose works amount to more than 500 books. Although he dealt with wide-ranging themes such as science, language, history, the Bible and more, he is mostly known for his science fiction, handbooks of science for the general public and mystery novels.

“‘Nightfall’ is the work that became a turning point in my career as a professional writer (omission) Suddenly, I was regarded as a major writer, and the world of science fiction was made aware of my existence. Some years later, it became clear that I had written a so-called ‘classic’”[1]

(Retrieved April 6, 2011)

Bing Translator

Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) is American writer and biochemist. Successful very prolific writer, counting more than 500 books and writings. Themes dealing with his science, language, history, Bible, etc. very spanning is especially science fiction, for general scientific manuals, mystery novel by well known.

“‘Nightfall’ was a piece was one turning point in his career as a professional writer I (omission), suddenly I important writer is considered the science fiction world in my presence featured to like was. Several years after I wrote the so-called “classical” it is clear the “

(retrieved April 12, 2011)

Highlighted errors
by well known: Although the original “によって” can sometimes mean “by”, the MT has not been able to infer that, in this context, the translation should be “for”. In addition, instead of rearranging the elements of the sentence so that they follow the logical order in English (to be known + FOR + something), the MT has left each of them where they were in Japanese (something + FOR + to be known).

his (…) I: For the resulting translation to include a third person pronoun (“his”) is strange, since the original quote marks the presence of a first person very clearly. Perhaps the reason “I” only appears later on is because the machine has not understood the structure of the sentence properly.

the science fiction world in: Although preposition-like elements appear after their complements in Japanese, postpositions are not common in English. The MT should have placed “in” before the noun phrase (“the science fiction world”) it is accompanying.

it is clear the: Again, the order of the elements does not make sense in English. The MT has produced a sequence of words that seem to be unconnected to the previous part of the sentence, as “it” and “the” do not have a reference.

Overall
Bing Translator has been quite accurate in the translation of the vocabulary and each individual expression, even proving able to interpret that “SF” means “science fiction” (the rest of the MTs in this article have not been able to). Structure-wise, some of the sentences are nevertheless difficult to follow. The part with the quote (the second paragraph) becomes particularly tangled, first because it begins introducing a third person pronoun that should not be there, and second because the elements of each sentence do not appear in what in English would be the expected order, which confuses and slows down the reading process.

SDL FreeTranslation.com

) Is (be on January 2, 1920-on April 6, 1992 ISAC Asimov be the writer, biochemist of America. 《主語なし》I am the writer of the polygraph who succeeded very much and the creation that count 500 or more copies. The theme that he treats is well-known by the science explanation book, detective stories for SF, general although it spans very variously the etc. such as science, language, history, the Bible.

“‘(The omission) that at night coming’ is the work that became one conversion point in the history as my professional writer, suddenly, I am regarded with an important writer and the SF world has come to pay attention to my existence. It became clear that I wrote so-called’ the classics‘ at the later time, several years”

(Retrieved April 6, 2011)

Highlighted errors
) Is: Apparently, the MT has rearranged the elements of the sentence and moved the verb to the front, somehow also dragging the second half of the parenthesis with it. Although verbs do not go right at the beginning of sentences in English (SVO, there is a subject before), they appear earlier than they do in Japanese (SOV, verbs go at the very end), so that might explain the machine’s action.

the: アメリカの作家 could either mean “an American writer” or “the American writer”. The MT has chosen the wrong option.

《主語なし》I: For some reason, the machine has added the annotation that no subject is indicated in Japanese. Then, it has introduced a first person pronoun immediately afterwards, probably because, since sentences in English always need a subject, the machine has found the need to create one by itself.

polygraph: “Polygraph” refers to an author who can write about many different topics, but 多作 usually means writing a lot and not necessarily in more than one field.

s (plural marker): Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, so whether古典refers to a single classic or more is left ambiguous if there is no context. Within this context, however, the noun is singular, so the MT has made the wrong choice.

Overall
The result produced by FreeTranslation is at first glance not very accurate, either lexically or grammatically. Nevertheless, lines such as “the SF world has come to pay attention to my existence” are impressively precise. This time, the rendition of the second paragraph is clearer than the one of the first paragraph, while in the case of every other MT, the opposite is true. In fact, when it comes to the part of the quote alone, FreeTranslation‘s translation is probably the one that lets us figure out more easily what the message of the Japanese original was.

Reverso

Isaac Asimov (from January 2, 1920 to April 6, 1992) is an American writer, a biochemist. it is a writer of very successful many products, and to count more than the writing 500 books. The theme that he treats scientizes it, and a language, the history, the Bible diverge into many branches very much, but are particularly well known by SF, an article for public science commentary book, a whodunit.

In “は as “since night-time“, my career as a professional writer, watched it with the writer that I was important suddenly (omission) who was the work which became one turning point, and SF world came to pay attention to my existence”. It became clear later in how many years that I wrote so-called “classic”

(Retrieved April 6, 2011)

Highlighted errors
scientizes it: The MT has interpreted that the noun 科学 (science) was actually working as a verb.

are: The MT has lost the reference of Asimov/he as a subject (singular), and probably thinks that “many branches” (plural) is what should be connected to and match in person and number with the verb “[to be] well known”.

an…a: As stated, Japanese nouns indicate no grammatical number by themselves. In this context, both 般向け科学解説書 and 推理小説should be translated as plural, but the MT has not been able to infer as much.

は: This particle has no specific translation in English, as its function is simply structural. During the translation, instead of being blend together with the rest of the sentence, it has somehow being left behind and untranslated due to its unspecific meaning.

since night-time: The MT has only been able to give a literal translation of 夜来たる, instead of looking for the actual English title of the story.

watched it with the writer: Although 見なされ comes from 見なす(“to consider”), 見る　(“to see”, “to watch”) shares the same kanji, so the MT seems to have confused both verbs. By itself, 作家と would mean “with the writer”, but because of the verb afterwards, と should be understood as “as” instead of “with”.

how many years: 何年 can only be rendered as “how many years” when the sentence is a direct question. In this case, 何年か後 is simply “after a few (indeterminate quantity) years”.

Overall
While there are several mistakes, as a whole, the translation by Reverso is not difficult to follow. Perhaps the second part of the first paragraph is where this MT’s rendition seems to be the weakest, as we get the impression that “the themes that he treats (…) are particularly well known”, rather than that Asimov deals with many themes but is particularly well known for others.

WorldLingo

As for Issac [ashimohu] (1920 January 2nd – 1992 April 6th) the American writer, raw chemist.It is the writer of the multi works which succeed very, the literary work counts 500 volumes or more. That science, language, history and Bible etc. it diverges the theme which is handled very, but especially SF, for the general scientific explanation book, by the detective novel it is well informed.

As for “’the night coming’, in personal history as my professional writer, it is the work which has become one commutation point (omission) suddenly, as for me to be considered the important writer, it reached the point where the SF boundary observes to my existence.Several years later, as for me that generally known ” classic ” is written, it was clear”

(Retrieved April 6, 2011)

Highlighted errors
[ashimohu]: Although “Asimov” is not a word to be found inside a dictionary, other MTs have been able to recognize the famous surname and spell it according to the standard form in English. We can see that this requires cultural –and not just linguistic- knowledge.

raw chemist: The MT has separated the first kanji (生, meaning “raw”) in 生化学者 from the rest of the word (化学者, meaning “chemist”), instead of understanding everything as a single unit.

boundary: By itself, 界 does mean “boundary”, but following another noun it is usually understood as “world”. The MT did not know this.

Overall
WorldLingo is one of the few MTs not to have recognized アシモフ as “Asimov”, which suggests that its cultural knowledge is less than that of other machines’. In addition, some of the sentences it constructs (e.g. “but especially SF, for the general scientific explanation book, by the detective novel it is well informed”) are too tangled to try and decipher. We can easily tell that, at least in this case, the result produced by this MT does not seem to be too reliable.

Google translator

Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American author, biochemist. Very successful and prolific writer, his work counts more than 500 books. His deal with scientific themes, language, history, the Bible and so very wide-ranging, especially SF, handbook for science in general, it is well known by the mystery.

“[Nightfall] is, in my professional career as a writer, which marked a turning point in one piece (omission), suddenly I was considered an important writer, SF my attention the existence of the world Now. in a few years, my so-called “classic” that was clearly written “

(Retrieved April 13, 2011)

Highlighted errors
the mystery: For some reason, the MT has omitted the 小説 (novel) part in 推理小説 (mystery novels).

a turning point in: Although preposition-like elements appear after their complements in Japanese, postpositions are not common in English. The MT should have placed “in” before the noun phrase (“a turning point”) it is accompanying.

SF my attention the existence of the world: Elements that should belong to the same phrase have been separated and moved elsewhere. For example, 私の存在 means“my existence”, and yet the machine has connected存在 (existence) with 界 (world), which in turn should depend on SF (SF界 means“world of science fiction”).

Overall
While Google’s translation of the first paragraph is handled quite well, we find more problems to understand the part with the quote. It is to be praised that semantically, almost every word -including the title of Asimov’s story- has been given the proper equivalent in English, however, the construction of each sentence still fails in terms of arrangement of the elements.

Conclusion

As we can see, machine translation is not perfect, but it is not completely inaccurate either. Each of the MTs we have checked has had different strong and weak characteristics, yet they complement one another in their capacities. Whenever we come across a text written in a language that we do not understand and we cannot contact a human bilingual, the best suggestion would be to pass the text through as many machine translators as possible. By comparing the points where their results differ, we will also find out what it is that they have in common and thus is likely to reflect the real meaning truthfully. A combination of all of the results we can get will provide us with a general idea that should not be too far-off from the original message.

References:

• アイザック・アシモフ (April 6, 2011). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. RetrievedApril 6, 2011.

• Machine translation (March 30, 2011). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 6, 2011.

• Japanese-English Machine Translation – Can Computers Translate? (2011). In Computing Japan, by Steven Myers. Retrieved April 6, 2011.

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[1] Although Asimov’s original quote is already in English, this is the translation of a translation.

Tatoeba Project

In linguistics, corpora (plural form of “corpus”) are large sets of language samples taken from real-life texts in a given context. Usually, they attempt to capture everyday speech in ordinary situations (although they can be more specific, e.g. samples of English essays written by non-native students), and thus can then be studied to analyze the characteristics of natural language, to extract statistics on the use of certain expressions or common errors, or to guide learners of a particular language by representing how native speakers would generally express themselves.

Tatoeba (Japanese for “for example”) is an ongoing non-commercial collaborative project to collect sentences from and translated into many different languages. Started in 2006, it currently serves as a cross-lingual aligned corpus with more than 750000 sentences distributed among more than 80 languages.

Tatoeba is an online and open language resource, whose data is available to anyone and can be accessed through the website’s multilingual interface (e.g. Japanese homepage, Basque homepage, Arabic homepage). Sentences are released under the Creative Commons license and can be downloaded as a .csv file, so that they can be freely incorporated into other sites or even textbooks. Users can register to contribute either by providing written or audio-recorded sentences, new translations, comments, or correcting mistakes in spelling, grammar, etc.

Nevertheless, in order to make sure that the contents offered are of sufficient good quality to be employed educationally, Tatoeba has a few moderators that review user activity. In addition, not every person is immediately given the right to make any type of edit, and only those members who accumulate reliability through positive participation become “trusted users”.

How to use Tatoeba

Clicking on the “browse” tab, you can perform sentence searches in different ways:

1. By words:

Using Boolean logic operators, you can perform queries to look for sentences including a specific word, two or more specific words, some word among more than one alternative, only certain words but not others, exact matches of a string of words, etc.

2. By language:

You can look for a sentence in the language you want and decide whether to see all of its translations or only those appearing in a specific language.

National flags are used as symbols to indicate which language a sentence is written in.

If a single sentence can be translated into a language in many ways, users are allowed to submit all the translations they consider necessary. Tatoeba allows for near-duplicates as long as their presence is assistive.

You can also indicate whether you want to find a direct translation or an indirect one. Indirect translations are those that occur when a translation is again translated, and thus this 2nd translation is no longer directly connected with the original sentence.

Indirectly translated sentences could lose some nuances and might not be as accurate, but Tatoeba nevertheless accepts their submission.

As of March, 2011, the three top languages with most sentences on the database are (in order) English, Japanese and Esperanto.

3. By list:
Users can create public or private lists to group sentences within a category. Public lists are accessible to everyone, and include examples such as “tourist sentences (all languages)“, “sayings & idioms (all languages)“, “natural-sounding Spanish sentences“, etc.

4. By tag:
Many types of tags can be attached to sentences in order to help classify or define them. Tags are used to mark different aspects of a sentence, from semantic qualities (related to topics such as “weather“, “family“, etc.) to notes concerning usage (“female speaker“, “colloquial“, etc.). However, because there is currently no uniform tagging system, some tags are unnecessarily repetitive (e.g. “Plato“, “by Plato” and “By-Plato“), others are almost or completely unused (e.g. “quotation“, “most important“), and a few do not seem transparent enough (e.g. “651884“, “@©hange“).

5. By user:

Sentences added or “owned” by a member can be found on their profiles.

Because not all users are as reliable or experienced, this feature helps you locate the most trusted contributions.

6. By audio:

Only those sentences for which an audio recording is available are displayed (at present totaling up to more than 9500).

Evolution

The enormous amount of sentences already submitted in less than 5 years proves Tatoeba‘s success. Although the database was at first taken from the Tanaka Corpus of parallel Japanese-English sentences, the collection has been widely modified, corrected, and expanded to include many more new sentences and other languages. While the project was started by a single person (who is still the only administrator on the site), there are now several moderators that also share the power to take care of the database through editing or deleting erroneous sentences.

Pageview statistics and the number of sentences submitted during the whole year of 2010 show that Tatoeba has seen a huge increase in popularity and activity in the span of a few months.

Tatoeba is currently a language resource checked by tens of thousands of people every day, but with its constantly growing community, we can be confident that the project will achieve much more in the course of time.

References:

• Tatoeba: Collecting example sentences (2011). Retrieved March 18, 2011.
• Web search query – Structured queries (March 9, 2011). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 19, 2011.

• Tanaka Corpus (February 3, 2011). In EDRDG Wiki. Retrieved March 13, 2011

• Tatoeba Project – Open, collaborative, multilingual dictionary of sentences (June 5, 2010). In YouTube, by TatoebaProject. Retrieved March 19, 2011.

Denshi Jisho – Jisho.org

Denshi Jisho is an online dictionary whose main purpose is to serve learners of Japanese. With an English interface, it provides Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese translations (rather than extensive definitions) of words and expressions, as well as a powerful kanji lookup service.

The site is developed by Kim Ahlström and not backed by any organization. Most of the data used comes from Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC project. This includes approximately 110,000 up-to-date entries for general terms, about 12,000 on computing and communications, over 14,000 entries relating to engineering and science and more than 720,000 Japanese names, in addition to roughly 160,000 bilingual example sentences and information on kanji and their radicals. SKIP (System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns) numbers along with kanji frequency statistics are also borrowed from linguist Jack Halpern’s research.

VOCABULARY:

Denshi Jisho offers helpful characteristics which make it a recommendable tool for non-native Japanese students. Searching can be carried out in kana (hiragana & katakana), rômaji (transliteration into the Latin alphabet) or kanji. The dictionary looks for every expression (including collocations) containing the sequence of sounds we may input, and is even able to locate the base form of inflected words.

To help foreigners whose language competence is low, entries mark whether a word is of common usage and add notes between brackets whenever certain meanings are restricted to specific contexts or registers, belong to a dialect or are part of the slang or archaisms, etc.

KANJI:

The kanji lookup system is especially useful. While other dictionaries (particularly printed versions) require that you recognize a kanji fully in order to search for it, Denshi Jisho’s “kanji by radicals” feature offers a really fast and effective method to find characters even if you are not familiar with them not can discern them very clearly.

Here is an example of the steps to follow when we only have a blurry picture of the kanji we need to identify:

I have chosen two kanji compounds for the explanations.

I suggest two possible approaches to decipher them:

Method 1:
If a word that you cannot read is formed by more than one kanji and you are able to recognize at least one of them, you may use it as a basis for the rest of the search. In the case of the word in blue, the second kanji “体” is simple enough to recognize. First, we begin by searching that kanji. As we will see, individual kanji entries are very complete, with translations of their usual meanings into several languages and information on details such as the stroke order.

Because the position of this kanji is at the end of the compound, we should click on “words ending in”.

As expected, we are given a list with all of the words that end in “体”. It would take a long time to check those 534 results until we found the one we are looking for, so we will try to reduce the amount by checking “common words only”. Not all of the words we might want to locate need to be part of the list of common words, but it is likely that they will if the text is taken from an average source.

As we can see, the amount of results has decreased drastically and now we can reasonably look for our word among the results.

There it is.

Method 2:
The other method consists on looking for a kanji through its most visible radicals. Let’s try to find the second kanji on the word in yellow.

Although the left side of said kanji is a little more complex, we can clearly see the radical “攵” on the right. We should click on it after entering “kanji by radicals.”

A list of kanji which have the radical “攵” has appeared on the lower side of the window. The characters highlighted in a darker blue are those which are part of the jouyou list, which, at least in theory, includes the more regularly used kanji. Most kanji we may come across with should therefore appear among the highlighted ones.

In case we are given too many results and still do not locate our kanji, it would be a good idea to add another radical. On the upper side, the radicals which cannot combine with the one we chose have become unselectable, so it is now easier for us to find the radicals we are missing among the options that remain selectable. Although at first I could not decipher the left side of the kanji we are looking for, seeing the few choices I am left with it is easier to make a decision. I can now suppose that the lower left side of our kanji is the radical “女”.

Now that we are left with only six options, it is easy to recognize our kanji. As expected, it appears highlighted and is part of the jouyou list.

To find the complete word in yellow, we could either look for the other kanji through its radicals or follow the first method again.

As we can see, the process is not complicated and it is rendered extremely quick and simple when, as it should usually be the case, we have a clear picture of the kanji. Denshi Jisho’s radical lookup system is not only handy and convenient, but also a practical way for students to train their kanji memorizing skills as they unconsciously get used to those small units which form the composition of each character.

Slide presentation

References:
About – Denshi Jisho (2011). By Kim Ahlström. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
Types of Dictionaries (2011). In e-books of Central Institute of Indian Language - An Introduction to Lexicography. Retrieved February 19, 2011.

My SlideShare Presentation

First Review: Machine Translation

FIRST TEXT (From English to Spanish) A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

ORIGINAL VERSION:

Michael Joseph Jackson’s story was a quintessentially American tale of celebrity and excess that took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to sad figure haunted by lawsuits, paparazzi and failed plastic surgery.

At the height of his career, he was indisputably the biggest star in the world; he has sold more than 750 million albums. He spent a lifetime surprising people, in recent years largely because of a surreal personal life, lurid legal scandals, serial plastic surgeries and erratic public behavior that have turned him — on his very best days — into the butt of late-night talk-show jokes and tabloid headlines. He died at age 50 in Los Angeles on June 25, 2009. Mr. Jackson’s death itself became an enormous spectacle. On television and on the Internet, tens of millions of people worldwide watched a memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

TRANSLATION BY REVERSO:

La historia de Jackson de Michael Joseph era un cuento fundamentalmente americano de celebridad y exceso que lo tomó de la maravilla de muchacho musical a la superestrella de pequeña explosión global a la figura(al número) triste atormentada(frecuentada) por pleitos, paparazzi y falló la cirugía plástica.

A la altura de su carrera, él era irrefutablemente la estrella más grande en el mundo; él ha vendido más de 750 millones de álbumes. Él gastó(pasó) una vida que sorprende a la gente, en los últimos años en gran parte debido a una vida privada surrealista, escándalos espeluznantes legales, cirugías sucesivas plásticas y el comportamiento errático público que lo ha girado - durante sus días muy mejores – en el extremo de bromas de programa de entrevistas nocturnas y titulares () tabloides. Él murió a la edad de 50 años en Los Angeles el 25 de junio de 2009. La muerte de Jackson de Sr. sí mismo se hizo un enorme espectáculo. Por televisión y sobre la Internet, decenas de los millones de personas por todo el mundo miraron un funeral en el Centro de Grapas en Los Angeles.

MACHINE TRANSLATION ERRORS:

1. Word Order

• Michael Joseph Jackson’s story/La historia de Jackson de Michael Joseph. It seems that the translator has had a problem with the artist’s middle name “Joseph” and with the Saxon genitive and has placed the words in the wrong order.
• Mr. Jackson’s death/La muerte de Jackson de Sr. We can see the same kind of error here, where the Saxon genitive refers to Mr. Jackson, but the machine does not know where to place the Mr when translating the text to Spanish.
• Lurid legal scandals/Escándalos espeluznantes legales. Here, the translator has placed the adjective in a place that does not sound natural to a Spanish tongue. It should have written “espeluznantes escándalos legales” or even “escándalos legales espeluznantes” instead.
• Serial plastic surgeries/Cirugías sucesivas plásticas. We find the exact same word order problem here, where the adjective “sucesivas” should go before or after “cirugías plásticas”, but never in the middle.

2. Verbal mistakes

• Was/era. The machine translates the verb “was” into Spanish as “era”, this is, it puts it in “pretérito imperfecto”, when it should be in “pretérito perfecto simple”, because though English language does not make a difference between these verbs, Spanish language does.
• Took/tomó. In the context of the text we are analysing, the verb “take” should not be translated as “tomar”, but as “llevar” or “transformar”. This problem is very common regarding machine translation, because polysemic words have more than one meaning and the machine is unable to identify the meaning and, thus, the required word.
• Failed plastic surgery/falló la cirugía plástica. In this case, the computer has translated the adjective “failed” into a verb, as if it were the past tense of “fail”, without noticing it is really an adjective in this sense.
• Became/se hizo. It would sound better if the verb “become” was translated as “convertir”.
• Watched/miraron. “Mirar” and “ver” are verbs which have similar meanings, but not exactly the same. Each if them is used for a particular context, and here it should be “ver”. No miras un funeral, lo ves.

3. Vocabulary problems

• Pop/explosión. Instead of the musical genre, curiously, the word “pop” has been translated as an explosion.
• Lawsuits/pleitos. This translation is not completely wrong, but it would be more natural to put it as “demanda judicial” than as “pleito” or “juicio”.
• At the height of his career/a la altura de su carrera. “At the height” is an expression that cannot be translated word by word or literally. It means at the peak of something, at the highest point of something.
• Erratic/errático. “Erratic” in the text refers to Jackson’s temperament, so the best way to put it would probably be “imprevisible” or “voluble”, not as “errático”, which sounds much more formal and not everybody would get the meaning.
• Into the butt of/en el extremo de: “Into the butt of something” in English is an idiomatic expression meaning “el blanco de algo”, but here it translates “butt” as extremo, just as it could have put any other meaning of the word: tonel, colilla, trasero…
• Plastic surgeries/cirugías plásticas: In Spanish, people do not pluralize the word “cirugía”. To pluralize it, we would use “operaciones quirúrgicas”, not “cirugías”.

4. Article Placement

• From musical boy wonder to global pop superstar/de la maravilla de muchacho musical a la superestrella. Here, the translator has included articles in a sentence that does not need them, as it is a set expression with no need of articles. It should be “de maravilla de muchacho a superestrella”.
• He died at the age of 50/Él murió a la edad de 50 años. While in English the subject is necessary, in Spanish we can omit it because using the article once and again would sound quite repetitive. Thus, we would simply say: “Murió a la edad de 50 años”.
• The Internet/la Internet. The machine has translated the article “the” as feminine, which is absolutely wrong in this case, because the word “Internet” in Spanish is used with no article preceding it.
• Tens of millions of people/Decenas de los millones de personas. Here, as in English, millions of people should go without article, as it is indeterminated. Therefore, the correct thing would be “decenas de millones de personas”.
• Watched a memorial service/miraron un funeral. Although the English article “a” would be, theoretically at least, be translated into Spanish as “un”, it does not sound okay to a native Spanish speaker, for we know whose memorial service it is, and should therefore be “el funeral”.

5. Gender Agreement

• Mr. Jackson’s death itself/la muerte de Jackson de Sr. sí mismo. The machine has not found the reference connection between “death” and “itself” and has translated “sí mismo” as masculine. The pronoun “itself”, however, refers to “death”, so in Spanish it should go in feminine, as “muerte” is feminine. So the correct way of writing this would be “la muerte de Jackson en sí misma”.

6. Prepositions

• On television and on the Internet/Por televisión y sobre la Internet. In Spanish, we say “en Internet”, not “sobre”. Probably we would translate the preposition “on” as “sobre” in other contexts and other meanings of the word, but not in this one.

7. Proper Names

Proper names should never be translated to Spanish word by word, for they would lose their sense.

• The Staples Center is, thus, to be translated as El Staples Center, or maybe El Centro Staples, but that is all. By no means should we write El Centro de Grapas, logically.

MY TRANSLATION:

La historia de Michael Joseph Jackson fue un cuento esencialmente americano de celebridad y exceso que le llevó de niño prodigio musical a superestrella del pop, y de superestrella a una triste figura atormentada por demandas judiciales, paparazzi y cirugía plástica fallida.

En la cima de su carrera, era indiscutiblemente la mayor estrella del mundo; ha vendido más de 750 millones de álbumes. Se pasó la vida sorprendiendo a la gente, en los últimos años en gran parte debido a una vida privada surrealista, a escándalos legales espeluznantes, constantes operaciones de cirugía y a una conducta pública imprevisible que le convirtieron -en sus mejores días- en el blanco de chistes en programas de entrevistas nocturnos y titulares de tabloides. Murió a la edad de 5o en Los Ángeles el 25 de junio de 2009. La muerte de Jackson en sí se convirtió en un enorme espectáculo. Por la tele y en Internet, decenas de millones de personas en todo el mundo vieron el funeral en el Staples Center de Los Ángeles.

SECOND TEXT (From English to Spanish)  A RECIPE

ORIGINAL VERSION:

BASIC APPLE PIE RECIPE

8 servings

This is my mom’s recipe for apple pie (I’ve even successfully made it a few times!) You can make the crust or you can use a premade one.

CRUST (recipe makes one double crust):

2 1/2 cups white flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cold butter, broken into small pieces
5 tbsp. cold vegetable shortening
8 tbsp. ice water

• Measure the flour, sugar and salt together. Stir to combine.
• Add the chilled butter pieces and shortening to the bowl. Cut them in with a pastry cutter or knife. Don’t over mix them.
• Add the ice water. Mix until the dough holds together (add a bit more water, if necessary).
• Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, knead it together, then divide in half.
• Flatten each half into a disk, wrap in saran wrap and chill for at least half an hour.
• Roll out one of the disks on a lightly floured surface until you have a circle that’s about 12 inches in diameter.
• Put the circle in a 9″ pie plate, trimming any extra dough from the edges with a sharp knife (parents only). Return it to the refrigerator until you are ready to make the pie.
• Add filling (see below)
• Roll out the second ball of dough and cover top. Use a fork or your fingers to pinch the edges together. Cut a couple slits in the top.

TRANSLATION BY REVERSO:

RECETA DE PASTEL DE MANZANAS de lenguaje BASIC

8 porciones

¡Esto es la receta de mi mamá para el pastel de manzanas (aún satisfactoriamente lo he hecho unas veces!) Usted puede hacer la corteza o usted puede usar uno prehecho.

La CORTEZA (la receta hace una doble corteza):

2 tazas 1/2 harina blanca
2 azúcar tbsp.
1/4 tsp. sal
1/2 mantequilla de frío de taza, rota en pequeños pedazos
5 mantequilla tbsp. fría de verduras
8 agua tbsp. de hielo

• Medir la harina, el azúcar y la sal juntos. Movimiento para combinarse.
• Añadir los pedazos de mantequilla enfriados y acortando al tazón. Córtelos en con un cortador de pastel o el cuchillo. No haga sobre los mezclan.
• Añadir el agua de hielo. La mezcla hasta () la masa sostiene juntos (añada un poco más () agua, si fuera necesario).
• Girar la masa en un ligeramente floured la superficie, amáselo juntos, luego parta() por la mitad.
• Aplanar cada mitad en un disco, el abrigo en el abrigo de saran y el enfriamiento durante al menos media hora.
• Estirar uno de los discos sobre un ligeramente floured la superficie hasta que usted tenga un círculo esto es aproximadamente 12 pulgadas en el diámetro.
• Poner el círculo en los 9 ” el plato(la placa) de tarta, ajustando cualquier masa suplementaria de los bordes con un cuchillo agudo (padres sólo). Devuélvalo al refrigerador hasta que usted esté listo a hacer la tarta.
• Añadir el relleno (mirar debajo).
• Estirar la segunda pelota de masa y cubrir la cima. Use un tenedor o sus dedos para pellizcar los bordes juntos. Corte una pareja corta en la cima.

MACHINE TRANSLATION ERRORS:

1. Word Order

• I’ve even successfully made it a few times! / aún satisfactoriamente lo he hecho unas veces! I think that the problem here lies on the original sentence. It should be: Even I have successfully made it a few times! That is why the placement of the adverb sounds a little bit funny when translated.

2.  Verbal Mistakes

• Broken into small pieces / rota en pequeños pedazos. Referring to butter pieces, we would never say that butter is “broken” in Spanish, so we would rather use “cortada” or “partida” or “troceada”.
• Move to combine / Movimiento para combinarse. Here, the verb “move” hads been translated into Spanish as a noun, when in this case it intends to indicate an order in imperative. So it should be “mover” para combinar. And, rather than “combinar”, mezclar would be better.
• Shortening to the bowl / acortando al tazón. Here, instead of translating “shortening” as “manteca”, the translator has put the verb “shorten”, that is, “acortar”,  in gerund.
• The dough holds together / la masa sostiene juntos. The verb “holds” in Spanish should not go in present, but in subjunctive, which in English is the same but in Spanish should be “sostenga”. Moreover, “hold together” is a phrasal verb which I would put in Spanish as “solidificar”.
• A circle that’s about 12 inches / un círculo esto es aproximadamente 12 pulgadas. In this case, instead of putting “that” as a relative clause, it has translated it as the connector “esto es”.
• Chill for at least half an hour / El enfriamiento durante al menos media hora. Once again, “chill” has been translated as a noun instead of as an imperative verb.
• Return it to the refrigerator / Devuélvalo al refrigerador. “Return” in this sense would be better translated as “volver a meter”.
• Pinch the edges together / pellizcar los bordes juntos. The verb “pinch” alone means “pellizco”, but when it comes to a recipe, it means “juntar”.

3. Vocabulary Problems

• Ice water / agua helada. I would translate it as agua fría.
• Wrap in a saran wrap / el abrigo en el abrigo. The machine  translator doesn’t know that “saran wrap” is a trademark for a plastic film to wrap food. And, again, it has not noticed that “wrap” is a verb in this context, not a noun. Moreover, wrap in this sense is related to cuisine, not to clothing.
• Sharp knife / cuchillo agudo. “Sharp” in this sense should be translated as “afilado”.
• Top / cima. Again, in this sense “top” doesn’t refer to the peak of a mountain, but to a pie, so I would put it as “superficie”.
• Couple slits / pareja corta. “Couple” here refers to “a pair of something” and slits are cuts. So the correct form would be “un par de cortes”.

4.  Article Placement

• Cup cold water / mantequilla de frío de taza. Here, the lack of  prepositions in the list of ingredients leads the machine to a confusion of order and prepositions. It should be “una taza de mantequilla fría”.
• Don’t overmix them / No haga sobre los mezclan. Here, the machine has taken “over” as a preposition apart, without knowing that it accompanies the verb, meaning “no los mezcle demasiado”.
• Until the dough holds together / hasta () la masa sostiene. I have put those parentheses to indicate there’s a lack of something after the preposition “hasta”; a “que” is missing so that the sentence makes sense, as it is in subjunctive.
• Until you are ready to / hasta que usted esté listo a. Curiously enough, the personal pronoun has been very well translated into the courtesy pronoun “usted”; however, in the same way that “ready” is followed by “to”, the word “listo” in Spanish is followed by “para”, not by “a”.

5.  Gender Agreement

• Knead it together / amáselo junto. Knead here refers to the dough, which is feminine in Spanish. Therefore, it should be “amásela junta”.
• Divide it in half  / pártalo por la mitad. In the same way, here it should be “pártala”, in feminine, referring to the dough once again.

6.  Untranslated Items

• Basic Apple Pie Recipe /  receta de pastel de manzanas de lenguaje BASIC. It seems that it doesn’t know how to translate the adjective “basic”, which is rather strange.
• The items tbsp and tsp have not been translated by the machine, probably because they are shortenings, meaning “tablespoonful” and “teaspoonful“.
• The machine didn’t know how to translate the verb floured either, because it is a verb made up by the noun “flour” and doesn’t exist as a verb, though it is commonly used in everyday colloquial language.

MY TRANSLATION:

RECETA BÁSICA PARA PASTEL DE MANZANA

8 raciones

Esta es la receta de mi madre para hacer pastel de manzana (¡yo misma he logrado hacerla con éxito un par de veces!). Puedes hacer la pasta tú mism@ o puedes usar una prehecha.

LA PASTA (La receta da indicaciones para hacer una pasta doble):

2,5 tazas de harina blanca
2 cucharadas grandes de azúcar
1/4 de cucharadita de sal
1/2 taza de mantequilla fría, troceada en pequeños pedazos
5 cucharadas grandes de manteca vegetal fría
8 cucharadas grandes de agua fría

• Medir la harina, el azúcar y la sal. Remover para mezclar.
• Añadir los trozos de mantequilla fría y la manteca en la fuente. Cortarlos con un cortador de masa o un cuchillo. No mezclar demasiado.
• Añadir el agua fría. Mezclar hasta que la masa este sólida (añadir un poquito más de agua si es necesario).
• Hacer que la masa se vuelva una superficie ligeramente harinosa, amasarla y cortarla por la mitad.
• Aplanar cada mitad en forma de disco, envolver en filme adherente y dejar enfriar durante media hora.
• Extender con rodillo uno de los discos en una superficie ligeramente cubierta de harina hasta obtener un círculo de dos centímetros y medio de diámetro.
• Poner el círculo en un plato de tarta de unos 23 centímetros, cortando la masa que sobra por los lados con un cuchillo afilado (sólo padres). Volver a meter en en frigorífico hasta que se esté preparado para hacer el pastel.
• Añadir relleno (ver abajo).
• Extender la segunda bola de masa y cubrir la parte de arriba. Usar un tenedor o los dedos para juntar los bordes. Hacer un par de cortes en la superficie.

THIRD TEXT (From Spanish to English) A LITERARY TEXT

ORIGINAL VERSION:

Hubo una vez una joven muy bella que no tenía padres, sino madrastra, una viuda impertinente con dos hijas a cual más fea. Era ella quien hacía los trabajos más duros de la casa y como sus vestidos estaban siempre tan manchados de ceniza, todos la llamaban Cenicienta.

Un día el Rey de aquel país anunció que iba a dar una gran fiesta a la que invitaba a todas las jóvenes casaderas del reino.

- Tú Cenicienta, no irás -dijo la madrastra-. Te quedarás en casa fregando el suelo y preparando la cena para cuando volvamos.

Llegó el día del baile y Cenicienta apesadumbrada vio partir a sus hermanastras hacia el Palacio Real. Cuando se encontró sola en la cocina no pudo reprimir sus sollozos.

- ¿Por qué seré tan desgraciada? -exclamó-. De pronto se le apareció su Hada Madrina.

- No te preocupes -exclamó el Hada-. Tu también podrás ir al baile, pero con una condición, que cuando el reloj de Palacio dé las doce campanadas tendrás que regresar sin falta. Y tocándola con su varita mágica la transformó en una maravillosa joven.

TRANSLATION BY TRADUKKA:

There was once a beautiful young woman who had no parents, but () stepmother, a widow with two daughters impertinent each more ugly. It was she who was the toughest jobs of the house as his clothes were always so stained () ash, everybody called her Cinderella.
One day the King of that country announced it would give a great feast, inviting all the young maidens of the kingdom.
- You Cinderella will not go, “said the stepmother. You’ll be at home scrubbing the floor and preparing dinner for when we return.
The day of dancing and was sorry Cinderella from her stepsisters to the Royal Palace. When she was alone in the kitchen could not suppress her sobs.
- Why should I be so unhappy? “He cried. Suddenly it appeared her Fairy Godmother.
- Do not worry, “said the Fairy. You too can go to the ball, but with one proviso, that when the clock struck twelve Palace will have to return without fail. And by touching it with his magic wand transformed () into a wonderful young man.

MACHINE TRANSLATION ERRORS:

1. Word Order

• Una viuda impertinente con dos hijas a cual más fea / with two daughters impertinent each more ugly. Here, the adjective “impertinent” should describe the stepmother, and not the daughters.
• De pronto, se le apareció su hada madrina / suddenly, it appeared her Fairy Godmother: It is clear that the sentence is ordered in the wrong way, and the object has been put twice because of that “it”, which should be “her fairy godmother”, without capital letters, by the way.

2. Verbal Mistakes

• Era ella quien hacía los trabajos más duros / it was she who was the toughest job: The verb “hacer” has been translated as the verb “to be”, which makes no sense.
• Fregando / scrubbing. “Fregar” should be translated as mop or wash, but “scrub” rather refers to washing with a brush.
• Reprimir / supress. For desires and impulses, the word here should be “repress”, rather than “supress”, which refers to a rebellion or to a yawn.

3. Vocabulary Problems

• Viuda / widow. Rather than “widow”, we should put “widower”.
• Condición / proviso. “Proviso” is a rather rare word in English, which could be substitued by “condition”, that sounds more natural.
• Baile / dancing. In English, “baile” is translated as “ball” in literary contexts of that time.

4. Prepositions

• Manchados de / stained. The verb “stain” here should be followed by the prepositions “in” or “with”, as the translator probably has taken the word as an adjective rather than as a verb.

5. Gender

• Era ella quien / it was she who. Instead of  ”she”, we should put “her”, in the accusative case.
• Ella / He. The machine sometimes confuses the masculine and feminine gender.
• Seemingly, the Spanish word “joven” does not specify if it is a man or a woman, so the machine translates it as “man“.

6. Articles

• Sino madrastra / but () stepmother. In Spanish, it is possible to write madrastra without an article when it is undetermined, but in English, it isn’t. We have to put the article “a” before the noun “stepmother”.

MY TRANSLATION:

There once was a very beautiful woman who had no parents, but a stepmother, an impertinent widower who had two daughters, each one uglier than the other. It was her who did the hardest housework and, as her dresses were always so stained with ash, everybody called her Cinderella.

One day, the king of that country announced that he was going to give a party to which he would invite all the maiden ladies of the kingdom.

‘You, Cinderella, will not go’, said the stepmother. ‘You will stay at home mopping the floor and preparing the dinner for us when we come back’.

The day of the ball arrived and Cinderella, sad, watched her stepsisters set off to the Royal Palace. Once she was let alone in the kitchen, she could not help sobbing.

‘Why should I be so unfortunate?’, she cried. Suddenly, her fairy godmother appeared.

‘Don’t worry’, said the fairy. ‘You can go to the ball, too, but on one condition; when the palace clock strikes twelve, you will have to come back without fail’. And, touching her with her magic wand, she turned her into a wonderful young girl.

CONCLUSION: As a brief conclusion, we should note that there are noticeable differences when translating texts from very different gender. We have not found the same kind of mistakes in the translation of the newspaper article and in the recipe or in the literary text.

SOURCES:

*Michael Jackson. The New York Times.

Retrieved 13:28, April 19, 2010, from:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/michael_jackson/index.htm

*Basic Apple Pie Recipe. DLTK’S Growing Together.

Retrieved 17:10, April 19, 2010, from:

http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/recipe/apple_pie_recipe.htm

*La Cenicienta.

Retrieved 17:12, April 19, 2010, from:

http://adigital.pntic.mec.es/~sanagust/cenicienta.htm

*Reverso Online Translator

Retrieved 17:10, April 19, 2010, from:

http://www.reverso.net/text_translation.asp?lang=EN

*Tradukka Online Translator

Retrieved 17:10, April 19, 2010, from:

http://tradukka.com/

Machine Translator

FIRST TEXT

Original Text in English

- The Roman Coliseum –

The real name is Flavius amphitheatre but why does the whole world call it the Coliseum ?

Perhaps he got the name from the enormous statue of the Emperor Nero , “the colossus” 35 metres high, which stood right next to the amphitheatre and has now been completely destroyed.

Like modern sports stadiums, the gave Coliseum spectators efficient protection from the sun thanks to its ingenious roof covering, the “Velarium”. The Velarium was an enormous linen tarpaulin hung by a system of ropes, winches and wooden poles that girded the top of the outer wall. It took one hundred sailors from the Imperial fleet to move it. They moved in perfect synchrony to the beating of a drum.

After the VI century, with the Empire’s decline, the Coliseum fell into disuse and its walls housed confraternities, hospitals, hermits and even a cemetery. From the Middle Ages onwards, the Coliseum has been one of Rome’s and the world’s greatest marvels, attracting hoards of visitors.

Google Translator version

- El Coliseo romano -

El verdadero nombre es Flavius amphitheatre, pero ¿por qué todo el mundo lo llaman el Coliseo?

Tal vez recibió el nombre de la enorme estatua del emperador Nerón “, el” coloso de 35 metros de alto, que estaba justo al lado del anfiteatro y ahora ha sido completamente destruido.

Al igual que los estadios de los deportes modernos, el Coliseo dio protección eficaz espectadores del sol gracias a su ingenioso techo que cubre, el “velario”. El velario fue una enorme lona de lino pendía de un sistema de cuerdas, cabrestantes y postes de madera que rodeaban la parte superior de la pared exterior. Tomó cien marineros de la flota imperial para moverlo. Se movían en perfecta sincronía con el latido de un tambor.

A partir del siglo VI, con la caída del Imperio, el Coliseo cayó en desuso y sus paredes ubicado cofradías, hospitales, ermitas e incluso un cementerio. A partir de la Edad Media, el Coliseo es una de Roma y maravillas naturales más impresionantes del mundo, atrayendo hordas de visitantes.

My own version

- El Coliseo Romano –

Su verdadero nombre es Anfiteatro Flavio, pero ¿Por qué todo el mundo lo llama el Coliseo?

Tal vez recibió el nombre de la enorme estatua del emperador  Nerón, “El Coloso” de 35 metros de altura, que estaba justo al lado del anfiteatro y que está ahora completamente destruido.

Al igual que los estadios de deporte modernos, el Coliseo proporcionó protección eficaz del sol a los espectadores gracias a su ingenioso techo cubierto, el “Velario”. El Velario era una enorme lona de lino que colgaba de un sistema de cuerdas, cabestrantes y postes de madera que rodeaban la parte superior de la pared exterior. Se necesitaron cien marineros de la flota para moverlo y se movían en perfecta sincronía con ayuda del golpe de un tambor.

A partir del siglo VI, con el ocaso del Imperio, el Coliseo cayó en desuso, sus paredes con cofradías ubicadas, hospitales, ermitas e incluso un cementerio. A partir de la Edad Media, el Coliseo es una de las maravillas más grandes de Roma y del mundo, atrayendo así un gran número de visitantes.

SECOND TEXT

Original Text in English

There’s Very Little to Complain About in Yankees’ Start

In the first year of the new Yankee Stadium, every team in the majors had a flag atop the upper deck: a green one for  the Oakland    Athletics, a blue one for the Los Angeles Dodgers and so on, a subtle sign of welcome for the visitors.

Not this season. Now the flags are white, each one emblazoned with  a different championship year. The message is unmistakable. This is the home of champions again, and the crown fits the Yankees quite well.

The Yankees have won 9 of 12 games this season, spending a leisurely Sunday sweeping away the Texas Rangers, 5-2, behind Andy Pettitte. It is safe to say things have not been this serene around the franchise in decades.

“My memory can’t go that far,” said Mariano Rivera, who retired the side in the ninth. “But we just love to play the game that we know how to play. We have a tremendous bunch of guys here that want to play the game right — young players, veteran players, players that come from other teams. We feel comfortable, feel good, and that’s the reason why we have been doing good so far.”

Google Translator version

Hay muy pocas quejas en Inicio Yankees

En el primer año del nuevo Yankee Stadium, todos los equipos en las Grandes Ligas había una bandera encima de la cubierta superior: uno verde para los Atléticos de Oakland, una azul de los Dodgers de Los Ángeles y así sucesivamente, un signo sutil de bienvenida para los visitantes.

No esta temporada. Ahora las banderas son de color blanco, cada uno adornado con un año de campeonato diferente. El mensaje es inequívoco. Este es el hogar de los campeones de nuevo, y la corona se ajusta a los Yankees bastante bien.

Los Yanquis han ganado 9 de 12 partidos esta temporada, de pasar un tranquilo Domingo barriendo a los Rangers de Texas, 5-2, detrás de Andy Pettitte. Es seguro decir que las cosas no han sido tan sereno en torno a la franquicia en las últimas décadas.

“Mi memoria no puede ir tan lejos”, dijo Mariano Rivera, quien se retiró la parte en la novena entrada. “Pero nos encanta jugar el juego que sabemos cómo jugar. Tenemos un montón enorme de chicos aquí que quieren jugar el juego de la derecha – los jugadores jóvenes, jugadores veteranos, (_) los jugadores que vienen de otros equipos. Nos sentimos cómodos, se sienten bien, y esa es la razón por la que hemos estado haciendo bien hasta ahora. “

My own version

Hay muy pocas quejas sobre el comienzo de los Yankees

En el primer año del nuevo Estadio de los Yankees, todos los equipos de las grandes ligas tenían una bandera en lo alto de la cubierta superior: Una verde para los Oakland Athletics, una azul para Los Angeles Dodgers etc., y un sutil signo de bienvenida para los visitantes.

Esta temporada, no. Ahora las banderas son de color blanco, cada una con un año de campeonato diferente. El mensaje es inconfundible. Ésta es otra vez la casa de los campeones, y la corona se ajusta bastante bien a los Yankees.

Los Yankees han ganado esta temporada 12 de 9 partidos, pansando un tranquilo Domingo barriendo a los Texas Rangers 5-2, detrás de Andy Pettitte. Se puede decir que las cosas no han sido tan serenas en torno a la franquicia de las últimas décadas.

“Mi memoria no llega tan lejos” dijo Mariano Rivera, quién se retiró a un lado en la novena entrada. “Pero nos encanta jugar al juego que sabemos como se juega. Aquí tenemos un enorme grupo de chicos que quieren jugar bien – jugadores jóvenes, jugadores veteranos, y los jugadores que vienen de otros equipos. Nos sentimos cómodos, bien, y esa es la razón por la que lo hemos estado haciendo bien hasta ahora”.

THIRD TEXT

Original text in English

The Shark  & The Mermaids

Required: Large pool

Players: Small to medium groups

How to play:

One person is chosen to be the shark and the others are mermaids. The Shark starts on the side of the pool close to the middle (the ladder) while the mermaids start at one end of the pool. When the shark says go, the mermaids must try to make it across the pool and back. Meanwhile the shark jumps in and starts to try and tag the mermaids. If a mermaid is tagged they are frozen and it is up to another mermaid to unfreeze them. The mermaids win if they each make it across the pool and back and are all touching the end of the pool. The Shark wins if everyone is tagged and frozen.

Rules:

* If you are frozen you cannot unfreeze anyone even if they are only an inch away.

* The shark may go under water.

* All the mermaids must have touched the opposite end of the pool before they can make their way back.

* Mermaids can communicate.

Google Translator version

El tiburón y Sirenas La

Requerido: Amplia piscina
Jugadores: pequeñas y medianas grupos

¿Cómo se juega:
Una persona es elegida para formar el tiburón y los otros son sirenas. El tiburón se inicia en el lado de la piscina cerca de la mitad (la escalera), mientras las sirenas comienzan a partir de un extremo de la piscina. Cuando el tiburón que me vaya, las sirenas que tratar de hacerlo a través de la piscina y la espalda. Mientras tanto, el tiburón salta y comienza a tratar de etiqueta de las sirenas. Si se marca una sirena que se congelan y corresponde a otra sirena para descongelar. Las sirenas ganar si cada uno de ellos que logran cruzar la piscina y la espalda y están tocando el extremo de la piscina. El tiburón gana si todos están etiquetados y congelados.

Reglas:

* Si se congelan no se puede descongelar cualquier persona incluso si son sólo una pulgada de distancia.
* El tiburón puede ir bajo el agua.
* Todas las sirenas que han tocado el extremo opuesto de la piscina antes de que puedan hacer su camino de regreso.
* (_) Sirenas se puede comunicar.

My own version

El tiburón y las sirenas

Se requiere: Piscina amplia

Jugadores:  Desde grupos pequeños a medianos

Cómo jugar:

Una persona es elegida para ser el tiburón y los demás las sirenas. El tiburón empieza en un lado de la piscina cerca de la mitad (la escalera), mientras que las sirenas empiezan desde un extremo de la piscina. Cuando el tiburón dice “¡ya!” las sirenas tienen que tratar de ir y volver y mientras tanto, el tiburón salta para poder cogerlas. Si una sirena es tocada, ésta misma se congela y le corresponde a otra sirena descongelarla. Las sirenas ganan si cada una de ellas hacen la ida y la vuelta y tocan el extremo de la piscina. El tiburón gana si todas las sirenas están cogidas y congeladas.

Reglas:

* Si te congelan no puedes descongelar a nadie aunque sea a una distancia corta.

* El tiburón puede ir bajo el agua.

* Todas las sirenas deben tocar el extremo del lado opuesto de la piscina antes de poder hacer el camino de regreso.

* Las sirenas pueden cominucarse entre sí.

MAIN MACHINE TRANSLATION ERRORS:

Using the machine translator, it can be appreciated that it makes several mistakes related to the lexicon and grammar.

1. Word Order: This has been one of the main errors MT has had when translating English into Spanish.

* protección eficaz espectadores del sol Here the sentence doesn’t make sense, MT translator does not know where to place del sol which in Spanish is before the subject. Apart from that, in order to give sense to the sentence we must add a preposition and also an article a los espectadores.

* sus paredes ubicado cofradías In this sentence MT has placed the adjective before the noun but in Spanish the adjective goes after the noun. Apart from that in order to give much sense to the sentence we should add a preposition sus paredes con cofradías ubicadas.

* No esta temporada In this example the MT is not totally wrong but Ésta temporada no fits better to the text.

2. Verb Tense: Many times, MTs have problems when dealing with a verb tense.

* pasar In the second text the MT has translated the verb spending as pasar and the correct form for the sentence  is the present continuous,  pasando.

* ganar In this sentence the MT has been confused with the verb win, it is wrong because we need the present simple ganan instead of the verb ganar.

* han tocado This is not really a bad translation but the text seems to refer to haber tocado so the MT’s example is wrong.

* puedan Here the infinitive poder fits better than the impreative.

3. Vocabulary: In most cases, the MT does not take into account that words can have more than one meaning.

* alto In this case the MT has confused high to an adjective and the text makes reference to a noun altura.

* latido The MT cannot choose the correct meaning taking into account the context. That is the work of the translator, to decide between the many meanings the one that fits best. So I have changed latido for golpe.

* hordas In this case, the meaning of this word does not make sense with the context as in Spanish it means a group which works with violence and without discipline. So I have changed hordas for un gran número.

* la parte Here we have a literal translation of the word side but it doesn’t make sense, so that it has been translated to lado.

* formar The MT has made a bad translation with the verb to be. It has translated as formar instead of the most obvious option ser.

4. Number & Gender: The MT cannot translate words with the correct gender or number because in English both nouns and adjectives do not have gender nor number inflexion.

* llaman Here it should have been llama as it gives much sense.

* adornado In this case, it has difficulties maintaining the concordance of subject-verb in gender. MT has translated adornado when it should be adornada.

* ellos We have the same problem here with it should be translated in feminine.

5. Pronouns & Articles:

* El At the beginning of the first text the context asks for a pronoun Su instead of an article El because it refers to the monument’s name.

* el The correct form would be preposition + article al.

* (_) In this case the MT has omitted the article Las which is needed in order to make sense.

6. Prepositions: There have been some errors when translating prepositions into Spanish.

* de The machine has not found the best preposition for the sentence blue one for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He has translated as de instead of para.

* para In this case, we can omit the preposition as it’s not necessary.

Finally, it should be of great importance mentioning that in some cases, the MT has introduced the relative pronoun que in una sirena que se congelan which it can be omitted. Apart from that, there is a sentence which needs the conjuction y because refering to the context the writer is giving several examples of players los jugadores jóvenes, jugadores veteranos, (_) los jugadores que vienen de otros equipos. and the machine has not been aware of it.

Sources:

• Funattic, game water. Retrieved, 18 April, 2010 from  http://www.funattic.com/game_water.htm#anchor12

• The New York Times.  Retrieved, 18 April, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/sports/baseball/19kepner.html?ref=sports

• Italy Guides. Roman Colosseum. Retrieved, 18 April, 2010 from http://www.italyguides.it/us/roma/rome/ancient_roman_empire/roman_colosseum.htm

• Google Translate. 2010. Retrieved on April 25, 2010, from  http://translate.google.com/?hl=es#

MACHINE TRANSLATION: Google translator

Google Translator is a free online translation tool.  It offers 52 different languages to work with, such as: English, French, Italian, Corean, Yiddish, Chinese, Catalan, and many more. The  number of paragraphs, or range of technical terms that will be translated is limited.

As any other machine translator it still makes some mistakes, however, it can help to get the general idea of a text but the translation is not 100% reliable.

FIRST TEXT

-Original text in English

“Brigham Young University Is Nation’s Most Popular National University”

By Brian Burnsed

Posted March 5, 2010

This year, Brigham Young University supplanted Harvard University as the most popular national university in America, according to an analysis of yield (the percentage of students accepted to a school who opt to attend) by U.S.News & World Report. For BYU, ranked 71st in U.S. News’s ranking of the nation’s best national universities, 78 percent of students who were accepted chose to attend. Harvard finished a close second, with 76 percent of accepted students opting to attend the nation’s most selective university.

Three distinct groups of the national universities produced the highest yield:

1. Ivy League and other highly selective private schools, which dominate the list because their high academic standing makes them desirable for applicants. Of the top 10 most popular universities, seven schools are also top 10 national universities: Harvard, Stanford University , Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Princeton University.

2. Large state schools not renowned for their elite academics but popular destinations in their region thanks to their size and the prominence of their athletic programs. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln, ranking fourth in popularity, and the University of Florida, ranking 11th, are archetypes of this category.

3. Schools with religious ties. Yeshiva University, a predominantly Jewish institution, ranked sixth in popularity.

U.S. News ranked not only national universities but liberal arts schools and service academies as well. Consistent with last year’s results, military academies got the most yeses from students. The United States Naval Academy topped the list again this year, with an 83 percent yield, followed closely by the United States Military Academy, with 79 percent. Thomas Aquinas College proved to be the most popular nonmilitary liberal arts college, as 68 percent of students accepted their invitations to attend.

-Google translator version

“Universidad Brigham Young, es la nación de la Universidad Nacional Los más populares”

Por Brian Burnsed
Publicado 5 de marzo 2010

Este año, la Universidad Brigham Young suplantaba la Universidad de Harvard como la universidad nacional más popular en Estados Unidos, según un análisis del rendimiento (el porcentaje de estudiantes admitidos a una escuela que opten por asistir) por US News & World Report. Para la Universidad Brigham Young, clasificado 71o en el ranking de EE.UU. Noticias de las mejores universidades nacionales del país, el 78 por ciento de los estudiantes que fueron aceptados optó por asistir. Harvard terminó en un cercano segundo, con 76 por ciento de los estudiantes admitidos que optan por asistir a la universidad más selectiva de la nación.

Tres grupos distintos de las universidades nacionales fue el de mayor rendimiento:

1. Ivy League y otras escuelas privadas altamente selectivo, que dominan la lista porque su alto nivel académico hace conveniente para los solicitantes. De las 10 universidades más populares, siete escuelas son también los primeros 10 universidades nacionales: Harvard, Stanford University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, la Universidad de Pennsylvania, la Universidad de Columbia y la Universidad de Princeton.

2. grandes escuelas del estado no reconocido por sus estudios académicos de elite, pero destinos populares en su región gracias a su tamaño y la prominencia de sus programas atléticos. La Universidad de Nebraska-Lincoln, ocupando el cuarto lugar en popularidad, y la Universidad de Florida, situándose en el 11, son arquetipos de esta categoría.

3. Las escuelas con vínculos religiosos. Yeshiva University, una institución predominantemente judío, en sexto lugar en popularidad.

Noticias EE.UU. clasificó no sólo las universidades nacionales, pero las escuelas de artes liberales y academias de servicio también. De acuerdo con los resultados del año pasado, las academias militares consiguió la mayoría de síes de los estudiantes. La Academia Naval de Estados Unidos encabezó la lista de nuevo este año, con un rendimiento 83 por ciento, seguido de cerca por la United States Military Academy, con 79 por ciento. Thomas Aquinas College demostró ser el colegio de artes liberales no militares más populares, como 68 por ciento de los estudiantes aceptados sus invitaciones para asistir.

Human translation

“La Universidad Brigham Young, es la Universidad Nacional más popular de la nación”

Por Brian Burnsed
Publicado 5 de marzo 2010

Este año, la Universidad Brigham Young suplantó a la Universidad de Harvard como la universidad nacional más popular en Estados Unidos, según un análisis de rendimiento (el porcentaje de estudiantes admitidos en la escuela a la que optan asistir) llevado a cabo por US News & World Report. Según la Universidad Brigham Young, la cual ocupa el puesto  71o en el ranking de EE.UU,  el 78 % de los estudiantes que fueron aceptados optó por asistir. Harvard terminó en segundo puesto, con el 76 % de los estudiantes admitidos que optaron por asistir a la universidad más selectiva de la nación.

Tres grupos bien diferenciados entre  las universidades nacionales produjeron el mayor rendimiento:

1. Ivy League y otras escuelas privadas altamente selectivas, que dominan la lista ya que su alto nivel académico las hace convenientes para los candidatos. De las 10 universidades más populares, siete escuelas son también las primeras 10 universidades nacionales: Harvard, Stanford University, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, la Universidad de Pennsylvania, la Universidad de Columbia y la Universidad de Princeton.

2. Grandes escuelas del estado no tan reconocidas por sus estudios académicos de élite, pero sí por sus destinos populares en su región gracias a su tamaño y a  la prominencia de sus programas atléticos. La Universidad de Nebraska-Lincoln, que ocupa el cuarto lugar en el ranking de popularidad, y la Universidad de Florida, situándose en el puesto 11, son arquetipos de esta categoría.

3. Las escuelas con vínculos religiosos. Yeshiva University, una institución predominantemente judía, la cual se sitúa en sexto lugar en el ranking de popularidad.

U.S News no sólo clasificó  las universidades nacionales, también las escuelas de artes liberales y academias de servicio . Según los resultados del año pasado, las academias militares consiguieron la mayoría de sí-es de los estudiantes. La Academia Naval de los Estados Unidos encabezaba la lista de nuevo este año, con un rendimiento del 83 %, seguida por cerca por la Academia Militar de los Estados Unidos, con un 79 %. Thomas Aquinas College demostró ser el colegio de artes liberales no-militares más popular, ya que el 68 % de los estudiantes aceptaron sus invitaciones para asistir.

SECOND TEXT

Original text in  English

OK! EXCLUSIVE: Kim Kardashian & Cristiano Ronaldo “Dating”

April 16th, 2010 5:06 pm / Author: Mary Beth Quirk

Kim Kardashian was spotted having a cozy meal with international soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo while she was in Madrid this week, setting the gossip wheels in motion… but is there anything else going on between these two very good-looking people besides a bit of a chat ‘n’ chew? An insider dishes on the twosome to OK!.

While Kim is jetting off to Australia for a few days and won’t have time to work on any new relationships just yet, her pal tells OK! things are developing with the superstar stud.

“Yes, they’re semi-dating,” the friend tells OK! exclusively.

OK! NEWS: KIM KARDASHIAN DIVES INTO WORK TO KEEP BUSY

Kim and her NFL star ex-boyfriend Reggie Bush broke up in late March, and since then she’s been busy making him jealous — first by rocking her ridiculous bikini bod in Miami, and perhaps now with this new romance!

Google translator version

OK! EXCLUSIVE: Kim Kardashian & Cristiano Ronaldo “Dating”

Kim Kardashian fue captada con una comida agradable con estrella del fútbol Cristiano Ronaldo cuando estaba en Madrid esta semana, el establecimiento de las ruedas en movimiento chisme … pero ¿hay algo más está sucediendo entre estas dos personas muy buen aspecto, además de un poco de un chat ‘n’ masticar? Una cocina con información privilegiada sobre la pareja a la revista OK!.

Aunque Kim es volando a Australia por unos días y no tendrá tiempo para trabajar en cualquier relación nueva todavía, su amiga le dice a OK! las cosas se están desarrollando con la superestrella de postes de madera.

“Sí, son semi-data”, el amigo le dice a OK! exclusivamente.

OK! NOTICIAS: KIM Kardashian BUCEO EN TRABAJO mantenerse ocupado

Kim y su estrella de la NFL ex novio Reggie Bush se disolvió a finales de marzo, y desde entonces ha estado ocupado haciendo lo celoso – en primer lugar, meciendo su bikini ridículo cuerpos en Miami, y quizás ahora con este nuevo romance!

Human translation

EXCLUSIVA OK!: Kim Kardashian y Cristiano Ronaldo “saliendo”

Kim Kardashian fue descubierta  esta semana en Madrid disfrutando de  una íntima y agradable comida con la estrella del fútbol Cristiano Ronaldo, encendiendo así el motor de los cotilleos … pero ¿hay algo más  entre estos dos guapos, además de un poco de charlita y mastiqueo? Una persona con accesoa información privilegiada sobre la pareja ha hablado con la revista OK!.

Aunque Kim esta volando hacia Australia  para unos días y no tendrá tiempo para entablar una nueva relación todavía, su amiga le ha contado  a OK! que la relación con la superestrella va adelante.

“Sí, están medio-saliendo”, dijo exclusivamente el amigo  a OK!

NOTICIAS OK!: KIM Kardashian se concentra en su trabajo para mantenerse ocupada.

Kim y su ex novio, la estrella de la NFL,  rompieron a finales de marzo, y desde entonces ella ha estado ocupada intentando ponerlo celoso – primero, meciendo su ridículo cuerpo en bikini en Miami, y quizás ahora con este nuevo romance!

THIRD TEXT

Original text in English

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (Walt Disney Pictures) (2010) Tim Burton

Peter Travers reviews Alice in Wonderland in his weekly video podcast, “At the Movies With Peter Travers.”

Sexual panic is the last thing you’d expect to prod Alice to get her ass down a rabbit hole. But, hell, this is Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, not your third-grade teacher’s version. Scholars of British author Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) will no doubt shriek, “Off with Burton’s head!” for the liberties he takes in this 3-D mix of live action and animation. In the script that Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) has woven, often forcibly, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, things have changed — dramatically.

For starters, Alice is no longer seven years old. As played with feminist fire by Mia Wasikowska (so good as the suicidal, erotically confused gymnast in HBO’s In Treatment), Alice, now 19, is her own woman. No way is she marrying the dweeb her guardians have chosen for her. So when the White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) interrupts her engagement party, Alice returns to Underland (the real name). She doesn’t remember the old gang, but they’re there. Some in the flesh — the mood-swinging Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the good-but-goofy White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the villainous, giant-headed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and her creepy Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover, a genuine wizard of odd). Other characters are animated and voiced by the cream of Brit talent, such as Absolem the caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Cheshire cat (Stephen Fry), Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both Matt Lucas) and that dragon of a Jabberwocky (Sir Christopher Lee, his voice breathing fire).

It’s a setup for magic that only fitfully comes. Burton is a visionary, but the film was shot in 2-D and converted to 3-D, a process that lets the seams show in a way they don’t in, say, Avatar. Worse, there’s a character jam that lets the film go inert and lose sight of Alice’s goals to kill the Jabberwocky and find self-enlightenment.

The actors help enormously, but only a few are given the time to stretch out and insinuate themselves. Bonham Carter gets laughs, whether she’s warming her feet on a squealing pig or ordering decapitations like lattes. Better yet, she shows how the regrettable size of the Queen’s head has made her a freak in her own mind.

Depp is a marvel as the Hatter, orange hair sprouting as a result of poisoning from the mercury used in making hats. He handles Carroll’s language so well that you wish more of it had slipped into the script. Love for Alice shines out of his eyes. But those hoping for a peek into the alleged perversity of Carroll’s interest in young girls won’t find it here. Still, even Disney and a PG rating can’t bury Burton’s subversive wit. Like Carroll, he’s a master at dressing up psychic wounds in fantasy. If you’re looking for the trippy bounce of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” with its wisdom in the shrooms, it can be found. Like Alice, you just have to dig for it.

Google translator version

Alice en el País de las Maravillas (Walt Disney Pictures) (2010)

Peter Travers comentarios Alice in Wonderland en su podcast de vídeo semanal, “en el cine con Peter Travers.”

Pánico sexual es la última cosa que usted esperaba productos Alice a penetrarle el culo por un agujero del conejo. Pero, el infierno, este es Alicia de Tim Burton de las maravillas, no la versión de su maestra de tercer grado es. Los estudiosos de la autora británica Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), sin duda, grito, “Que le corten la cabeza de Burton! de las libertades que se toma en esta combinación de 3-D de la acción en vivo y animación. En la secuencia de comandos que Linda Woolverton (El Rey León, La Bella y la Bestia) ha tejido, a menudo por la fuerza, de Alicia en el país de las maravillas y A través del espejo, las cosas han cambiado – dramáticamente.

Para empezar, Alicia ya no es siete años de edad. Como juega con fuego feminista por Mia Wasikowska (tan bueno como el gimnasta suicida, eróticamente confundido en HBO In Treatment), Alice, ahora de 19 años, es su propia mujer. De ninguna manera es que casarse con el Dweeb sus guardianes han escogido para ella. Por eso, cuando el Conejo Blanco (voz de Michael Sheen) interrumpe la fiesta de compromiso, Alice vuelve a Underland (el nombre real). Ella no recuerda la vieja banda, pero están ahí. Algunos en la carne – el estado de ánimo oscilante Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), el bien-pero-tonto White Queen (Anne Hathaway), el malvado, el gigante con cabeza de la Reina Roja (Helena Bonham Carter) y su espeluznante Sota de Corazones (Crispin Glover, un mago real de impar). Otros personajes son animados y la voz de la crema del talento británico, como la oruga Absolem (Alan Rickman), el gato de Cheshire (Stephen Fry), Tweedledee y Tweedledum (tanto Matt Lucas) y que un dragón de Jabberwocky (Sir Christopher Lee, su voz de fuego de respiración).

Es una disposición para la magia que sólo a ratos viene. Burton es un visionario, pero la película fue rodada en 2-D y se convierte en 3-D, un proceso que permite mostrar las costuras de una manera que no en, por ejemplo, está en línea. Peor aún, hay un atasco de carácter que le permite ir a la película inerte y perder de vista los objetivos de Alicia para matar a los Jabberwocky y encontrar auto-iluminación.

Los actores de gran ayuda, pero sólo unos pocos se dan el tiempo para estirarse y se insinúan. Bonham Carter se ríe, ya sea que el calentamiento los pies en un cerdo, que chilla como decapitaciones o pedir café con leche. Mejor aún, muestra cómo el tamaño de la cabeza lamentable de la Reina la ha convertido en un monstruo en su propia mente.

Depp es una maravilla como el Sombrerero, el pelo de naranja brota como resultado de la intoxicación por el mercurio utilizado en la fabricación de sombreros. Él maneja bien el lenguaje de Carroll tan bien que desea más de lo mismo se había metido en el guión. El amor por Alice brilla en sus ojos. Pero los que esperan para una ojeada en la perversidad de interés supuesta Carroll en las niñas jóvenes no lo encontrará aquí. Aún así, incluso Disney y una calificación de PG no se puede enterrar el ingenio subversivo de Burton. Al igual que Carroll, es un maestro en vestirse heridas psíquicas en la fantasía. Si usted está buscando el rebote trippy de “Conejo Blanco de Jefferson Airplane”, con su sabiduría en los hongos, que pueden ser encontrados. Como Alicia, sólo tienes que buscar por el mismo.

Human Translation

Alice en el País de las Maravillas (Walt Disney Pictures) (2010)

Peter Travers comenta “Alice en el país de las Maravillas” en su podcast semanal, “Al cine con Peter Travers.”

Pánico sexual es la última cosa que te esperas que le produzca a Alicia el caer de culo por un agujero de un conejo. Pero, demonios, este es el “Alicia en el país de las Maravillas” de Tim Burton, no la versión de tu maestra de tercero. Los eruditos del autor británico Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), sin duda no dudarán en gritar, “¡Que le corten la cabeza a Burton! por las libertades que se toma en esta combinación  3-D de  acción en vivo y animación. En este guión que Linda Woolverton (El Rey León, La Bella y la Bestia) ha tejido, a menudo por la fuerza, desde  Alicia en el país de las maravillas y A través del espejo, las cosas han cambiado – dramáticamente.

Para empezar, Alicia ya no tiene siete años de edad. Caracterizada por Mia Wasikowska de manera fogosa y feminista (tan buena como la gimnasta suicida y eróticamente confusa,  en ” In Treatment” de HBO), Alicia, ahora con 19 años, es toda una mujer. De ninguna manera va a casarse con el bobo que sus guardianes han escogido para ella. Así, cuando el Conejo Blanco (doblado por Michael Sheen) interrumpe su fiesta de compromiso, Alicia vuelve a Underland (el nombre real). Ella no recuerda a su viejo grupo de amigos, pero están ahí. Algunos en carne y hueso - el sombrerero loco, con su estado de ánimo oscilante  (caracterizado por Johnny Depp), la buena-pero-tonta Reina Blanca (Anne Hathaway),el villano, la cabezona Reina Roja (Helena Bonham Carter) y su espeluznante jota de Corazones (Crispin Glover, un verdadero pelota). Otros personajes son animados y los dobla voz la créme de la créme del talento británico, como la oruga Absolem (doblado por Alan Rickman), el gato de Cheshire (con la voz de Stephen Fry), Tweedledee y Tweedledum (los dos doblados por Matt Lucas) y ese dragón de Jabberwocky (Sir Christopher Lee, su voz expulsando fuego).

Es una tinglado de magia que sólo sucede a ratos. Burton es un visionario, pero la película fue rodada en 2-D y convertida a 3-D, un proceso que permite mostrar las costuras de una manera en la que no se da, por ejemplo, digamos en  Avatar. Lo que es peor aún, hay un atasco de personajes que permite a la película convertirse en inerte y perder de vista los objetivos de Alicia de matar el Jabberwocky y encontrar su auto-iluminación.

Los actores ayudan enormemente, pero sólo a unos pocos se les da el tiempo necesario para relajarse y se insinúarse a sí mismos. Bonham Carter ríe a carcajadas, ya sea calentandose los pies con un cerdo chillón o  ordenando decapitaciones como si estuviera pidiendo café lattes. Mejor aún, muestra cómo el odioso tamaño de la cabeza de la Reina la ha convertido  interiormente en un monstruo.

Depp es una maravilla en el papel del Sombrerero, el pelo que le brota de color naranja como resultado de la intoxicación por el mercurio utilizado en la fabricación de sombreros.  Maneja tan bien el lenguaje de Carroll  que uno desearía que hubiesen “colado” más en el guión. El amor por Alice brilla en sus ojos. Pero los que esperen echar una ojeada al supuesto perverso interés  que Carroll tenía en las niñas jóvenes no lo encontrarán aquí. Aún así, incluso Disney y una calificación de PG no se puede enterrar el subersivo ingenio de Burton. Al igual que Carroll, es un maestro en disfrazar heridas psíquicas con fantasía. Si estás buscando el rebote trippy del ” Conejo Blanco del avión de Jefferson “, con su sabiduría sobre los hongos,  puedes encontrarlo. Como Alicia, sólo tienes que buscar por tu cuenta.

MAIN MT MISTAKES

- Grammar mistakes: the MT is not able to translate correctly  some verb tenses. There are examples in the three texts.  In the first text, supplanted has been translated as suplantaba, which is a imperfect past instead of suplantó, which would be the correct form. In the second text, in order to translate  is jetting off to Australia , the MT has chosen es volar, which is nonsense because it has been translated as a noun instead of a verb. And, finally, in the third text, the MT has decided to translate you’d expect as , esperaba which is a imperfect past instead of esperas, present.

- Lexical errors: Just by paying attention to the titles of the articles , we can  realize how words are not translated accurately, as tehy are non-sense: Universidad Brigham Young, es la nación de la Universidad Nacional Los más populares . Another example is the sentence: “setting the gossip wheels in motion…” translated as “el establecimiento de las ruedas en movimiento chisme” which has no sense. In addition, the MT does not take into account that words can have more than one meaning in some cases; that is the case of  prod in the third text: ”you’d expect to prod Alice to get her ass down a rabbit hole” translated as“a penetrarle el culo por un agujero del conejo”.

Another mistake is that the MT tends to translate everything into Spanish and, sometimes, names should remain in their original language; that is the case of Universidad Brigham Young Brigham which had to be Young University.

- Syntactic errors, word order is the main problem for MT in this field, that is the case of “Kim Kardashian fue captada con una comida agradable con estrella del fútbol Cristiano Ronaldo cuando estaba en Madrid esta semana”.Furthermore, in the third text, the MT has omitted the verb  in “una cocina con información privilegiada sobre la pareja a la revista OK!”. Sometimes when translating the MT omits some particles as it can be seem in this translated sentence:”pero ¿hay algo más está sucediendo entre estas dos personas muy buen aspecto”. It has to be mentioned,  that the MT has introduced relative pronouns as ”que” when it was not necessary and on the other hand it hasn’t introduced them in other cases where it was necessary as it can be seen in the latter example: “algo más está sucediendo entre estas dos personas” instead of “algo más que está sucediendo entre estas dos personas”.

To finish up,  it must be said that “per cent” has been translated as %, and from my point of view I prefer it to be translated  with the symbol %.
References:

• Google Translate- Retrieved on April 19, 2010, from http://translate.google.com/?hl=es#
• U.S. News-Retrieved on April 19, 2010, 23:18 from http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/03/05/brigham-young-university-is-nations-most-popular-national-university.html
• OK magazine-Retrieved on April 19, 2010,  23:18 from http://www.okmagazine.com/2010/04/ok-exclusive-kim-kardashian-cristiano-ronaldo-dating/
• Film.com-Alice in Wonderland–Retrieved on April 19, 2010,  23:18 from http://www.film.com/movies/review/1100-alice-in-wonderland/32581589

My slide presentation on Google MT service:

MT TRANSLATION

First text:

WATER POLO RULES

Water polo is a rapidly growing sport in the United States and internationally as well. For anyone involved in playing or being a spectator, it is important to understand the rules of the game.

Teams are composed of about 12 players, depending on rules of the league. Seven players are in the pool at a time, which includes one goalie and six field players. Each field player plays both offense and defense, and the goalie is not allowed on the other half of the pool. There are many different arrangements of players in front of the goal (which may be attached to the pool deck or free floating on lane lines). The location of the players depends on the play that is being run, similar to basketball or hockey.

One important rule is that the ball can only be handled by one hand at a time. If a player holds the ball (which is the size of a volleyball, yellow and with rubber grip) with both hands, the referee calls a turnover and the posession of the ball goes to the opposing team. Also, there are important lines on the pool deck which delineate specific regions in which the rules of play are special. There is a mark 2 meters out from the goalposts on both sides of the pool called the “Two Meter Line.” Players on offense WITHOUT posession of the ball are not allowed in the opposing team’s 2 meter line, or a turnover is called. Only a player with the ball is permitted within the 2 meter line. There is also a “Four Meter Line,” which is the location from which penalty shots are taken on the goal. A penalty shot is given to a player who is fouled within the four meter line while he/she is in an active attempt to score. A foul constitutes a hit from the defensive player, swimming over the offensive player’s back, or other such shot interference. Clean defense involves positioning the defender’s body between the offensive player and the goal and focusing on the ball rather than the individual player.

The clock depends on the rules of play and the level of competition. Usually, men play four 7-minute quarters while women play four 6-minute quarters. There is a running shot clock of 35 seconds for each team which resets only if a shot is taken or there is a change in possession. Teams are usually allowed 2 time outs per game, although this may vary. Uniforms consist of swimsuits for both men and women, as well as a cap on the head with plastic ear protectors and the player’s number on both sides. Away teams wear lighter color caps, while home wears the darker color.

In scoring, one point is given for each time the ball is thrown into the goal, and in some leagues there is a 2-point line several meters out of the goal. Each quarter begins with a sprint in which the fastest members of each team race toward the ball, which is placed at the halfway point on the water by the referee.

Water polo is an exciting, challenging, and fun sport. It is full contact and its competitiveness cannot be underestimated. The game is great to watch and even better to play- you may not imagine what goes on underwater that no one, especially not the referee, can see. Water polo is a growing sport for good reason, and it may soon be one of the leading sports for both men and women’s athletics.

• Translation by google traductor:

El water polo es un deporte de rápido crecimiento en los Estados Unidos y también internacionalmente. Para cualquiera que participe en el juego o ser un espectador, es importante entender las reglas del juego.

Los equipos se componen de alrededor de 12 jugadores, dependiendo de las reglas de la liga. Siete jugadores están en la piscina a la vez, que incluye un portero y seis jugadores de campo. Cada jugador de campo juega tanto a la ofensiva y la defensa y el portero no se permite en la otra mitad de la piscina. Hay muchas modalidades diferentes de jugadores delante de la portería (que pueden asociarse a la cubierta de la piscina o flotando libremente en las líneas de carril). La ubicación de los jugadores depende de la obra que se está ejecutando, al igual que el baloncesto o el hockey.

Una regla importante es que el balón sólo puede ser manejado por un lado, a la vez. Si un jugador tiene el balón (que es del tamaño de una pelota de voleibol, amarillo y con agarre de goma) con ambas manos, el árbitro llama a un volumen de negocios y la posesión del balón va al equipo contrario. Además, hay líneas importantes en la terraza de la piscina que delinean las regiones específicas en las que las reglas del juego son especiales. Hay una marca de 2 metros fuera de la goalposts en ambos lados de la piscina llamado “de dos metros de línea.” Los jugadores a la ofensiva sin estar en posesión de la pelota no se permiten en la línea del equipo contrario metros 2, o el volumen de negocios se llama una. Sólo un jugador con el balón se permite en la línea de metro 2. También hay una “línea de cuatro metros,” que es la ubicación desde la que se toman penaltis en la meta. Un lanzamiento de penalti se da a un jugador que es objeto de falta dentro de la línea de cuatro metros, mientras que él / ella está en un intento activo para anotar. Una falta constituye un éxito del jugador defensivo, nadar sobre la espalda del jugador ofensivo, oa otras como disparo. Limpieza de defensa consiste en la colocación del cuerpo del defensor entre el jugador ofensivo y el objetivo y centrarse en el balón en lugar del jugador individual.

El reloj depende de las reglas del juego y el nivel de competencia. Por lo general, los hombres juegan cuatro cuartos de 7 minutos, mientras que las mujeres juegan cuatro cuartos de 6 minutos. Hay un reloj de tiro de funcionamiento de 35 segundos para cada equipo que restablece sólo si uno se realice la toma o hay un cambio de posesión. Los equipos suelen permitirse outs 2 tiempo por partido, aunque esto puede variar. Los uniformes constan de trajes de baño para hombres y mujeres, así como una gorra en la cabeza con protectores de oídos de plástico y el número del jugador en ambos lados. Lejos equipos más ligero desgaste gorras de color, mientras que lleva a casa el color más oscuro.

En puntuación, un punto está dado por cada vez que se lanza el balón a la meta, y en algunas ligas hay una línea de 2-puntos de varios metros de la meta. Cada trimestre se inicia con un sprint en el que el más rápido miembros de cada equipo de carreras hacia el balón, que se coloca a mitad de camino en el agua por el árbitro.

El water polo es un excitante, desafiante y divertido deporte. Es el contacto completo y su competitividad no puede ser subestimada. El juego es grande para ver y jugar aún mejor, usted no puede imaginar lo que sucede bajo el agua que nadie, especialmente no del árbitro, puede ver. El water polo es un deporte cada vez mayor por una buena razón, y pronto puede ser uno de los deportes principales, tanto para hombres y el atletismo de la mujer.

• My translation

El water polo es un deporte que esta creciendo rapidamente en Estados Unidos y también internacionalmente. Para cualquiera que juegue a este deporte o sea espectador del mismo, es importante que entienda las reglas del juego.

Los equipos están compuestos por unos doce jugadores, depende de las reglas de la liga. Sieste jugadores están en la piscina al mismo tiempo, que están formados por un portero y seis jugadores. Cada uno de los jugadores del campo juega tanto a la ofensiva como a la defensiva, y al portero no se le permite estar en la otra mitad de la piscina. Hay diferentes colocaciones de los jugadores delante de la porteria (wa). la colocación de los jugadores depende del juego que estén ejecutando, similar al baloncesto y al hockey.

Una regla importante es que el balón solo se puede sujetar con una mano al mismo tiempo. Si el jugador coje el balón ( el cual es del tamaño de uan de voleyvol, amarilla y con agarre de plástico) con las dos manos, el arbitro pita un cambio y la posesión del balón vá para el equipo contrario. También hay importantes lineas en la cubierta de la piscina las cuales definen los tramos  en las cuales las reglas del juego son especiales. Hay una marca a dos metros de la porteria en ambos lados de la piscina que se llama “la linea de dos metros”. Los jugadores que estén atacando sin estar en posesión del balón no les está permitido estar en la linea de dos metros del equipo opuesto, o también se le llama hacer un giro.Solo un jugador  que tenga el balón puede pasar por la linea de dos metros. También hay una “linea de cuatro metros”, que es el lugar en el cual se tiran los penalties a la portería. Se le da un tiro de penalti a un jugador cuando es obstruido dentro de la linea de cuatro metros mientras está intentando puntuar. Una obstrucción constituye un golpe de un defensa nadando por encima de la espalda de un jugador atacante o interferir en un tiro similar. La defensa limpia  implica posicionar a el defensa entre el atacante y la porteria y centrandose en la pelota y no en el jugador.

El reloj depende de las reglas del juego y del nivel de competición. Normalmente, los hombres juegan durante cuartos de siete minutos mientras que  las mujeres juegan durante cuartos de seis minutos. Hay un relos de cuenta atrás  de 35 segundos para cada equipo el cual se vuelve a poner a cero solo si se coje un tiro o si hay un cambio en la posesión. A los equipos solo se les está permitido dos tiempos muertos por partido, aunque esto puede variar. Los uniformes consisten en trajes de baño para ambos hombres y mujeres, al igual que un gorro en la cabeza con protectores de orejas de plástico y el número del jugador en ambos lados. Los equipos de fuera llevan gorros de colores más claros, mientras que los equipos de casa llevan el color oscuro.

En la puntuación, se da un punto cada vez que el balón entra en la portería, y en algunas ligas hay una linea de dos puntos a varios metros de la portería. Cada cuarto empieza con un sprint en el cual los jugadores más rápidos de cada grupo corren hacia la pelota, la cual esta colocada a mitad de camino en el agua por la referencia.

Water polo es un deporte emocionante, desafiante y divertido. Es de contacto físico y su competividad no tiene que ser subestimada. El juego está bien para verlo y todavía mejor jugarlo- no podrias imaginarte que pasa debajo del agua que nadie, no especialmente el arbitro, puede ver. Water polo es un deporte que esta creciendo por buenas razones, y puede ser pronto uno de los deportes lideres para mujeres y hombres atletistas.

ERRORS

I have translated this text using google translator and I have found some mistakes, especially in word order.

“Los jugadores a la ofensiva sin estar en posesión de la pelota no se permiten en la línea del equipo contrario metros 2, o el volumen de negocios se llama una”.

In this sentence the word order is totally incorrect. Google has translated the sentence into spanish, but with the word order that is use in English, that is way instead of putting “dos metros”, it has translated it as “metros 2″. Apart from that, in this sentence the vocabulary is incorrect too, because it has translated “a turnover is called” as “el volumen de negocios se llama una”, instead of translating it as “también se le llama hacer un giro”. There are many other examen throughout the whole text, for example,

• the “Two Meter Line” is translated by Google as “de dos metros de línea”, instead of translating it as “la linea de dos metros”.

There are other words that had not been translated or that they had been translated incorrectly, such as, “goalposts”; Google have not translated that word into spanish, it has left it like that, instead of translating it as “porteria”.There are many other errors in vocabulary, for example, Google has translated the word “plays” as “las obras”, because, it has translated it in teh context of literature, and not in the context of sports, “los juegos”.

Second text:

Neuschwanstein Castle (Schloss Neuschwanstein) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival Palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füsen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner.

The palace was intended as a personal refuge for the reclusive king, but it was opened to the paying public immediately after his death in 1886. Since then over 60 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with up to 6,000 per day in the summer. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleepy Beauty castle.

Translation by reverso

Neuschwanstein el Castillo (Schloss Neuschwanstein) es un arte románico de siglo XIX el palacio de Renacimiento sobre una colina rugosa encima del pueblo de Hohenschwangau cerca de Füssen en Baviera sudoeste, Alemania. Ludwig II comisionó el palacio de Baviera como una marcha atrás y como un homenaje a Richard Wagner.
El palacio fue querido como un refugio personal para el rey recluso, pero fue abierto al público que paga inmediatamente después de su muerte en 1886. Desde entonces más de 60 millones de personas han visitado el Castillo Neuschwanstein. Más de 1.3 millones de personas visitan cada año, con hasta 6,000 por día en el verano. El palacio ha aparecido prominente en varias películas y era la inspiración para la Bella durmiente del bosque del Disneyland el Castillo.

My translation

El castillo de Neuschwanstein  (Schloss Neuschwanstein) es un palacio del renacimiento románico del siglo XIX  que se encuentra sobre una colina escabrosa encima del pueblo de Hohenschwangau cerca de Füssen en el sudoeste de Baviera, Alemania. El palacio fue encargado por Ludwig II de Baviera como refúgio y como un homenaje a Richard Wagner.

El palacio fue construido como un refugio personal para el rey recluso, pero fue abierto al público inmediatamente después de su muerte en 1886. Desde entonces más de 60 millones de personas han visitado el Castillo Neuschwanstein. Más de 1.3 millones de personas visitan cada año, con hasta 6,000 por día en el verano. El palacio ha aparecido de manera prominente en varias películas y fue la inspiración para el castillo de la Bella de Disneyland.

ERRORS

I have translated this text about Neuschwanstein Castle using Reverso translator, and I have found some errors in its version. For example, in the version of Reverso word order is sometimes altered, we could see and example of this in this sentence: “es un arte románico de siglo XIX el palacio de Renacimiento” instead of translating as “es un palacio del renacimiento románico del siglo XIX”; it also altered the order of the nouns, “en Baviera sudoeste”, it is not incorrect at all, but it is better to say ” en el sudoeste de Baviera”.

Looking at vocabulary, Reverso version has translated incorrectly some words, for example, the English sentence “ as a retreat”, Reverso has translated it as “como una marcha atrás”, being the correct translation “como refúgio”.

To finish with, it has some problems also with the translation of verbs; in this text, for instance, the correct translation for “was the inspiration” would be “fue la inspiración”, however, Reverso has translated it as “era la inspiración”.

Third text

Clown Fish or Clown Anemonefish

Clown fish (also called the Clown Anemonefish) are small fish that live among anemone (fish-eating animals that look like undersea flowers and have hundreds of poisonous tentacles). The anemone’s tentacles kill other fish that touch them, but the Clown fish seems to be immune to its poison. Scientists think that the Clown fish may be coated with a mucous that protects it from the poison. The anemone protects the Clown fish from most predators, who know not to go near the anemone’s tentacles. The clown fish helps the anemone by cleaning it (as it eats detritus) and perhaps by scaring away predators of the anemone.

Translation by Reverso

El pescado de payaso (también se llamó el Payaso Anemonefish) es el pequeño pescado que vive entre la anémona (los animales que comen pescado que se parecen a flores submarinas y tienen cientos de tentáculos venenosos). Los tentáculos de la anémona matan otro pescado que los toca, pero el pescado de Payaso parece ser inmune a su veneno. Los científicos piensan que el pescado de Payaso puede ser cubierto de un mucoso que lo protege del veneno. La anémona protege el pescado de Payaso de la mayor parte de depredadores, que saben(conocen) para no ir cerca de los tentáculos de la anémona. El pescado de payaso ayuda a la anémona por limpiándolo (como esto come el detrito) y quizás por espantando a los depredadores de la anémona.

My translation

El pez payaso (también llamado el payaso Anemonefish) son pequeños peces que viven entre anémonas (animales que comen peces que se parecen a flores de debajo del agua y tienen cientos de tentáculos venenosos). Los tentáculos de las anémonas matan a otros peces que los tocan, pero el pez payaso parece que es inmune a su veneno. Los científicos piensan que el pez payaso puede estar cubierto de un moco que le protege del veneno. La anémona protege al pez payaso de la mayoría de los depredadores, que saben que no tienen que pasar cerca de los tentáculos de la anémona. El pez payaso ayuda a la anémona limpiándola (ya que come detritus) y igual asustando a los depredadores de la anémona.

ERRORS

In this text about the “Clown-fish”, the first error that I had found in the version of Reverso is that it translates “Clown-fish” literally, I mean, it translates as “el pescado de payaso”, but the correct translation would be “el pez payaso”.

Another problem that I have found, is that it does not translate well the number, meaning taht, it does not diffenciate well singular from plural, here are some examples,

• “are small fish”, Reverso has translated it as “es el pequeño pescado”, instead of saying “son pequeños peces”
• “kill other fish that touch them”, Reverso has translated as “matan otro pescado que los toca”, and the correct translation is “matan a otros peces que los tocan”

To finish with this text, the Reverso version has translated the verb “to be”, which could be “ser o estar”, as “puede ser cubierto” and in this case the correct translation would be “puede estar cubierto”, so, it has translated the word correctly, but in that sentence exclusively, that translation is incorrect.

• Reverso tranlator, http://www.reverso.net/text_translation.asp?lang=ES
• Google traductor, http://translate.google.com/

Itzultzaile automatikoak

Oraingo honetan itzultzaile automatikoen egokitasunaz arituko naiz. Batez ere euskara-gaztelerazko itzultzaileak aztertuko ditut eta horretarako 3 testu mota aukeratu ditut: literatur testu bat, egunkaritik ausaz hartutako albiste bat eta iritzizko artikulu bat. Testu bakoitza itzultzeko orduan batetik, opentrad itzultzaileaz eta euskararen inguruan dudan ezagutzaz baliatu naiz.

LEHEN TESTUA:Testu hau Pako Aristi-ren Irene Tempo di adagio liburutik aterata dago (20-21.orr.). Ondoren agertzen dena jatorrizko bertsioa da:

Marina goroldio bila abiatu zen arratsalde hartan. Ez zeukan etxetik asko urrutiratu beharrik, goroldioak bazter guztiak jaten bait zituen munduaren zati hartan, baina basoan zehar abiatu zen nahiko denbora bazuela eta. Orbela hankapean kraskatzen zitzaion, gaztaina morkolak ostikoz jotzen zituen, eta etxeko guztiak bezala, nahiz eta elkarri ezer ez esan baso hark pentsatzera bultzatzen zuen Marina bera ere .

Opentrad-ek ematen duen itzulpena, euskaratik gaztelerara:

Marina se imitando los pequeños detalles de los musgos en busca. tarde No del piso donde vive alquilado muchos, musgos necesidad urrutiratu que baztr comerte todas que tierra que, aunque esté parte del planeta se inicio el bosque escribía el tiempo suficiente. Hojarasca se kraskatzen hankapean, castaña morkolak banda tocaba otras ostikoz y los más pequeños de la casa y como todas las nada, aunque pensar en el contexto de de que no. ha provocado la desaparición de zuen marina

Nik egindako itzulpena:

Aquella tarde Marina acudió en busca de musgo. No tenía que alejarse demasiado de casa, ya que el musgo estaba en todos los rincones en aquélla parte del mundo, pero se adentró en el bosque porque tenía bastante tiempo. La hojarasca se le resquebrajaba entre las piernas, iba dando patadas a los erizos de las castañas, y como todos los de casa, a pesar de no decirse nada, auél bosque también la inducía a pensar.

BIGARREN TESTUA: 2010eko apirilaren 29an, Berria egunkarian agertutako albistea da. Ondoren jatorrizko bertsioa agertzen da:

Tolo Calafat hil egin da

Herenegun Annapurnako gailurra iritsi zuen, Juanito Oiartzabalekin eta Carlos Paunerrekin batera, baina beherazko bidea hasterakoan buruko edemarekin larri jarri zen 7.500 metroko altueran. Sherpen eta helikopteroaren laguntzaz hura aurkitzeko ahalegina egin dute, baina alferrik izan da. Oiartzabal eta Pauner helikopteroz jaitsi dituzte oinarrizko kanpalekura, izozte eta ikusmen arazoekin.

Opentrad-ek ematen duen itzulpena:

Tolo calafat muere anteayer la cúspide annapurnako, juanito oiartzabalekin y carlos paunerrekin al vez, pero por descendente meses al iniciarse un el camino grave edemarekin mental se puso 7. 500 metros de altura. Sherpen y helikopteroaren para encontrarla justo el día se con la ayuda vano, de. Pérez unos extraterrestres que aterrizan con y pauner helicóptero básicas, congelación y visuales del entorno de campamento se refiere.

 Nik egindako itzulpena:

Tolo Calafat ha muerto anteayer alcanzó la cima del Annapurna junto con Juanito Oiartzabal y Carlos Pauner, pero al iniciar el descenso se sintió mal a causa de un edema cerebral a unos 7.500 metros de altura. Han intentado encontrar su cuerpo con la ayuda de sherpas y de un helicóptero. pero sin éxito. Han bajado en helicóptero a Oiartzabal y Pauner al campamento base con problemas de visión y congelación.

HIRUGARREN TESTUA: Iritzi artikulua da, Berria egunkariaren bertsio digitalean 2010eko apirilaren 29an agertu takoa. Jarraian jatorrizko bertsioa agertzen da:

« Arazoa daukanak hitz egiten du»

Feministen aldarrikapenak gutxietsi eta kritikatu izan dira oso maiz, baina emakumeek bakarrik altxatu ohi dute ahotsa Feministek egindako aldarrikapenak maiz deabrutuak izan dira. Errealitatea desitxuratzea eta gatazka faltsuak sortzea leporatu izan diete. Baina begi bistakoa da emakumeen presentziaren aldeko oihuak emakumeek bota dituztela nagusiki. Galdera pausatuta, erreportaje honetarako erantzun nahi izan dutenek garbi dute zanpatua sentitzen denak altxatu behar duela ahotsa. «Pobreziaz zergatik hitz egiten dute bakarrik pobreek?», nabarmendu du Itxaro Bordak. «Beltzez zergatik hitz egiten dute beltzek bakarrik? Eta euskaldunez zergatik hitz egiten dute euskaldunek bakarrik? Arazoa pairatzen duenak bere arazoaz hitz egiten du».

Opentrad-ek honako itzulpena eskaintzen digu:

« el problema habla daukanak » reivindicaciones feministen se y ha provocado críticas, la presencia de mujeres asiduamente sólo ex levantar tanto voz feministas reivindicaciones realizadas deabrutuak con frecuencia. Deformación y la realidad creación de falsos ha acusado conflicto. Pero femenina evidente las mujeres que gritos a favor de presencia se. Pregunta de para este reportaje posada los querido responder, que limpio todos después levántela manteniendo que apisonado siente voz. « pobreza zergatik hitz egiten solo se dedica los pobres? » destaca que confío plenamente en bordas. « en negro ¿por qué hablan sólo desde lo normativo negros Y euskaldunez zergatik hitz egiten las personas euskaldunes se caracterizan por tener sólo desde lo normativo El problema por parte del que la realiza sufren la problemática de la ». palabra

Nik egindako itzulpena:

“Habla quien tiene el problema” A menudo se han citicado y menospreciado las reivindicaciones de las feministas, pero sólo las mujeres suelen levantar la voz A menudo las reivindicaciones de las feministas han sido tergiversadas. Se les ha hecho responsables de desfigurar la realidad y de crear falsas disputas. Pero es evidente que han sido principalmente mujeres las que han alzado su voz a favor de la presencia de mujeres. Planteada la pregunta, quienes han querido contestar para este reportaje tienen claro que quien se sienta pisoteado debe alzar su voz. ¿”Por qué sólo hablan de pobreza los pobres?” ha destacado Itxaro Borda. “Por qué sólo hablan de negros los negros? Y de los vascos por qué soólo hablan los vascos?Quien tiene un problema habla de su problema” Beraz, aurreko itzulpenak kontuan hartuta bistan dago itzultzaile automatikoek zeregin handia dutela egiteke, euskararen esparruan behintzat. Ez dute itzulpen koherenterik eskaintzen, esaldiek ez dute zentzurik, egitura sintaktikoetan oker handiak egiten dira eta hori gutxi balitz, euskarazko ordaina emateko gai ez denean zuzenean gaztelerazko hitza ematen du. Hortaz, momentuz, itzultzaileak ez dira fidagarritasun handirik eskeintzen.

Iturriak:

• Berria.info: Kontsulta data: 2010eko apirilaren 29a www.berria.info/
• Aristi, Pako: Irene, Tempo di adagio, Erein literatura, Donostia, 1987
• Elhuyar hiztegia. Kontsulta data: 2010eko apirilaren 29a http://www.euskara.euskadi.net/r59-15172x/eu/hizt_el/index.asp
• Opentrad, plataforma de traducción automática. Kontsulta data: 2010eko apirilaren 29a http://www.opentrad.com/
• RAE, Real Academia de la lengua Española. Kontsulta data: 2010eko apirilaren 29a www.rae.es/

Review: MT – Google Translate

Google Translate is a service provided by Google Inc. to translate a section of text, or a webpage, into another language. The service limits the number of paragraphs, or range of technical terms, that will be translated. It is important to mention that Google has managed to develop and use its own translation software.,unlike other translation services such as Babel Fish, AOL, and Yahoowhich use SYSTRAN.

In order too acquire its huge amount of linguistic data, Google used United Nationsdocuments, and so Google now has a 6-language corpus of around 20 billion words’ worth of human translations.

How does it work?

First, we have to choose the languages in which we want to work:

Next step is to paste the text we want to be translated into the window

Automatically, the MT would do its job, and the translated version of the text pasted, would appear below:

You can see, the tool also offers the possibility to listen to the translation by clicking

However, Google Translate, like other automatic translation tools, has its limitations. While it can help the reader to understand the general content of a foreign language text, it does not always deliver accurate translations. This last  is the main goal of this review. In three short translations, from English to Spanish, I will check some of the mistakes made by the MT and that can only be corrected with human supervision.

FIRST TEXT

Original text from Vogue UK:

VICTORIA BECKHAM has landed herself yet another Vogue cover.

The fashion designer and former Spice Girl features on the front of the May issue of German Vogue which, as it’s a denim special, comes in denim packaging.

In the magazine, Victoria talks about her ideal pair of jeans: “The legs should be cut super long, with narrow knee. There is nothing more unattractive than to feel bruised on the waist.”

Inside, meanwhile, Posh strikes a pose dressed in a lace blouse and perched on a playground duck.

Beckham appeared on the cover of British Vogue back in April 2008, followed byVogue India the same year and Vogue Russia in February 2009.

Google Translator:

Victoria Beckham se ha volvió a ser portada de Vogue.

La diseñadora de moda y ex Spice Girl características en el frente de la edición de mayo de la revista Vogue alemana que, como es un especial de mezclilla, viene en envases de mezclilla.

En la revista, Victoria habla sobre su pareja ideal de jeans: “Las piernas deben ser cortados super largo, con la rodilla estrecha. No hay nada más atractivo que sentirse golpeado en la cintura.”

En el interior, por su parte, las huelgas una pose elegante vestido con una blusa de encaje y se posó en un pato patio de recreo.

Beckham apareció en la portada del Vogue británico en abril de 2008, seguida por la India Vogue el mismo año y Rusia Vogue en febrero de 2009.

Human Translation:

Victorio Beckham ha vuelto a ser portada de Vogue.

La diseñadora de moda y ex Spice Girl, aparece en la portada del número de Mayo de la Vogue alemana, la cual, como es un especial de jeans, viene en un paquete de denim.

En la revista, Victoria habla sobre sus vaqueros ideales: “Las piernas deben ser super largas, con la rodilla estrecha. No hay nada menos atractivo que sentir magulladuras en la cintura.”

En el interior, entretanto, Posh posa vestida con una blusa de encaje y sentada sobre un pato de patio de colegio.

Beckham apareción en la portada de la Vogue inglesa en Abril de 2008, seguida por la Vogue india el mismo año y la Vogue rusa en Febrero de 2009.

SECOND TEXT

Original text from BBC news:

A princess hoping to break a world record and a man dressed as the Angel of the North are among those running this year’s London Marathon.

Up to 36,000 people are taking on the world famous 26.2-mile course through the city.

Princess Beatrice, 21, hopes to become the first royal to complete the route.

She has joined a “human caterpillar” of 34 runners aiming to beat the world record for the most people to finish a marathon while tied together.

They are tied together two by two with bungee cords.

The princess, who is running for Children in Crisis, said she was “very, very excited”.

The Icelandic ash cloud had threatened to disrupt the race and many of the elite athletes only arrived after boarding a specially chartered flight from Madrid on Thursday.

Google translator:

Una princesa con la esperanza de romper un récord mundial y un hombre vestido como el Ángel del Norte se encuentran entre los que dirigen este año maratón de Londres.

Hasta 36.000 personas están tomando en el mundo famoso campo de 26,2 kilómetros a través de la ciudad.
Princesa Beatriz, de 21 años, espera convertirse en la primera real para completar la ruta.
Ella se ha unido a una oruga “humana” de los 34 corredores con el objetivo de batir el récord mundial para la mayoría de la gente para terminar una maratón mientras atadas.
Ellos están unidos de dos en dos con cuerdas elásticas.
La princesa, que se está ejecutando para Niños en Crisis, dijo que estaba “muy, muy emocionado”.
La nube de cenizas islandesa había amenazado con interrumpir la carrera y muchos de los atletas de élite sólo llegó después de abordar un vuelo especial fletado desde Madrid, el jueves.

Human Translation:

Una princesa con la esperanza de romper un récordo mundial y un hombre vestido como el Ángel del Norte están entre los que correran este año el Maraton de Londres.

Hasta 36.000 personas van a tomar parte en el mundialmente famosa carrera de 26.2 millas a través de la ciudad.

La princesa Beatrice, 21, espera convertirse en la primera persona de la realeza en completar la ruta.

Se ha unido a la “cadena humana” de 34 corredores que tratan de batir el récord mundial del mayor número de personas que terminan un maratón estando atados.

Están atados de dos en dos con cuerdas elásticas.

La princesa, que corre a favor de Children in Crisis, dijo que estaba “muy, muy emocionada”.

La nube de cenizas islandesa había amenazado con interrumpir la carrera y muchos de los atletas de élite sólo llegaron tras embarcar en un vuelo especial fletdo desde Madrid, el jueves.

THIRD TEXT

Original text from Guardian.co.uk:

Red Queen is my daughter, says Bonham Carter

When she is older, two-year-old Nell Burton may view her father’s film ofAlice in Wonderland with a particularly curious eye. For her mother,Helena Bonham Carter, last night revealed that she based her tyrannical Red Queen on her and Tim Burton‘s young daughter.

While the toddler is presumably not given to ordering the beheadings of those who surround her, Bonham Carter said Nell was the main inspiration for the bossy, spiteful monarch who maintains a reign of terror over Wonderland in Burton’s 3D CGI reimagining.

“I thought: well, she’s a toddler, because she’s got the big head,” Bonham Carter revealed at a press conference ahead of last night’s London premiere. “She’s a tyrant … toddlers are tyrants. The ‘no sympathy for any other living creature’ – that’s our toddler, in fact.

Google Translator:

Reina Roja es mi hija, dice Bonham Carter

Cuando ella es mayor, de dos años de edad, Nell Burton puede ver las películas de su padre de Alice in Wonderland, con un ojo particularmente curioso. Para su madre, Helena Bonham Carter, anoche reveló que basó su tiránica Reina Roja en ella y la joven hija de Tim Burton.
Aunque el niño probablemente no es dado a ordenar la decapitación de quienes le rodean, Bonham Carter dijo Nell fue la principal inspiración para el monarca autoritario, rencoroso que mantiene un reinado de terror sobre las Maravillas de Burton en 3D CGI reinvención.

“Yo pensé: bueno, es un niño pequeño, porque tiene la cabeza grande”, reveló Bonham Carter en una conferencia de prensa antes del estreno de la noche pasada en Londres. ”Ella es un tirano … los niños son tiranos. El” ninguna simpatía por cualquier otro ser vivo “- ese es nuestro hijo, de hecho.

Human Translation:

Es posible que cuando sea más mayor, Nell Burton, de dos años, vea la película de su padre Alicia in Wonderland con ojos particularmente curiosos. Ya  que su madre, Helena Bonham Carter, reveló anoche que basó su tiránica Reina Roja en la hija que ella y Tim Burton tienen en común.

Mientras que la pequeña probablemente no ordene la decapitación de aquellos que la rodean, Bonham Carter dijo que Nell fue la principal inspiración para mandona y maliciosa monarca que mantiene un reinado de terror sobre El País de las Maravillas en la reinvención en 3D IGC de Burton.

“Pensé: bueno, es la pequeña, porque tiene la cabeza grande,” reveló Bonham Carter  en una conferencia de prensa antes del estreno de anoche en Londres. “Ella es una tirana….los niños son tiranos. La “no simpatía por ningún otro ser viviente” – esa es nuestra pequeña, en realidad”.

MAIN MISTAKES MADE BY MT:

Working with a MT may accelerate the process of translating, but it is always necessary to supervise the work by a person, for this are one of the main mistakes that the machines usually makes when dealing with these two languages:

1. Pronouns and articles: This might be due to the differences in rules between both languages. Spanish needs articles, but as English does not have articles, the translator would sometimes not use them. “Princess Beatrice” > “Princesa Beatriz” > “La princesa Beatrice”.
2. Verb tenses:Many times, MTs have problems when dealing with a verb tense. It mistakes the imperfect with the past perfect; the conditionals, the subjunctive, the active or passive form, etc. ”VICTORIA BECKHAM has landed herself yet another” > “Victoria Beckham se ha volvió a ser” > “Victorio Beckham ha vuelto a ser portada de Vogue.”
3. Abbreviation: “3D CGI” > “3D CGI” > “3D IGC” Here it would be important to change the abbreviation to the translated language for the readers to understand.
4. Reference and Gender: It cannot translate words with the correct gender or number because in English both nouns and adjectives do not have gender nor number inflexion. “toddler” > “el niño” > “la niña” As toddler is a word for both genders, the machine cannot go back and find the reference of the word to use the correct word.
5. Word meanings: There are many problems with the lexicon. When a word has more than one meaning, it cannot choose the correct one taking into account the context. That is the work of the translator, to decide between the many meanings the one that fits best. “features” > “características” > “aparece”. “feature” is here used as a verb, but the machine has taken it as a noun. The same happens with “running” > “dirigen” and “ejecutando” > “corriendo”
6. More mistakes could be mentioned: word order, punctuation, cultural items transmission, expressions, etc.

For further reading,

Using Google Translation in Cross-Lingual Retrieval.

Sources:

• Google Translate. (2010, April 24). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:48, April 25, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Google_Translate&oldid=358090951
• BBC News. Retrieved 11:58, April 25, 2010,http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8641951.stm
• Vogue.com Retrieved 12:16, April 25, 2010,http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/100422-victoria-beckhams-vogue-germany-co.aspx
• Guardian.co.uk Retrieved 12:27, April 25, 2010.http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/feb/26/red-queen-helena-bonham-carter