As a professional translator in 2023 I have become used to being torn between how translation agencies prohibit the use of machine translation tools like Google Translate – for reasons which hardly need explaining when you consider the (often utterly irrelevant) gibberish output they can be prone to producing – and that common translation agencies’ expectation that professional translators on their books use what’s called CAT tools (computer-assisted translation) in their work for them, Trados being the most prominent example of CAT software I can think of.
That said, I ask you: am I really expected to believe that it’s never OK (or professional, depending on how you want to look at it) for a professional translator to turn to Google Translate for ideas on how to translate a single word or two, or even a short phrase (as opposed to a whole sentence, which could be long)? I’ve been writing about the significance of Google Translate in the translation industry for years; my article “My resistance to being deluded by machine translators” (dated 5 February 2019) is just one case in point. I beg to differ.
The thing is, Google Translate can even be trusted to get terminology right – this will in no small part be down to the fact that Google Translate bases its output on information obtainable from countless websites; allow Malinda Kathleen Reese (of all people!) to explain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRsKy9Rqa9M
It’s not as if I haven’t learned to appreciate my limitations when it comes to foreign languages anyway; take this LinkedIn comment I posted (publicly) on only 30 August:
“I’m feeling depressed as I write this. It’s to do with my job: specifically, my talents as a professional translator. Yes, I have a degree in foreign languages, French and German to be specific. The truth is, I long ago forgot when I started to realise my limitations when it comes to foreign language skills… and this was strikingly evident to me today when I had to Google Translate the word “records” (in the sense of “according to my records”) into German again – “laut meinen” what? “Laut meinen Aufzeichnungen”, apparently.
In all candour, when I talk about my language limitations here, I insist it’s less about getting words confused or grammar issues, and more about the meanings of some individual words in context; with German verbs and nouns in particular, it would seem. Seriously, in a case like this, when I read “Aufzeichnungen” I still immediately recall “zeichnen” as the German word for “to draw”, and as such might otherwise have defined “Aufzeichnungen” as “displays” or “presentations” or something like that in the past. An example of a noun for a vague concept, (possibly) based on a verb, rather than an item appropriated in actions that just might (totally unsurprisingly) be important to an individual.
But I can’t be the only professional translator who has had a moment like this (speaking as a man who has been a professional translator for nearly fifteen years now). Just asking for a friend.”
But recently I did an English editing job with material which was marketing about Vilnius as a tourist attraction. Vilnius is, of course, the capital of Lithuania, and there can be no doubt that whoever wrote the original was Lithuanian while also somebody who spoke very good English. I was given links to four short articles online which were essentially articles marketing Vilnius to tourists, intended to serve as an example of how I was to rewrite the material in this job. Well, take this bit of what the original was before I edited it:
“the properties identifying Vilnius, such as next, comfy, artistic, and bold… ”
I just had to change this to “the characteristics that make Vilnius what it is: these include modern, comfortable, artistic, and bold…”. But the bit that really got me for a bit was “next”. You see, when you think about it, “next” is an adjective which just cannot be applied to a single thing alone; only to a noun that’s a label for a thing which follows a previous one of the same thing in whatever way. I spent some time wondering how to write my original interpretation of what “next” should have been; I was essentially aiming to imply that Vilnius is a city which is on the verge of the newest “things” i.e. “things” (most likely) in terms of scientific and/or cultural and/or social development/advancement. Something like that. After some minutes of this, a different thought finally struck me. That was when I changed “next” to “modern”, which you have to admit sounds much more convincing.
But it should come as no surprise that I really don’t speak Lithuanian, and at that point I just had to leave a comment for the project manager asking if “modern” was really what was meant by “next”. But I didn’t look up “next” or “modern” in Lithuanian on Google Translate at the time because, like I said, I don’t speak it and it just didn’t seem worth it; who could blame me for thinking that I would have been none the wiser at the end of it? Yet right now, I wonder. For Google Translate often lists many different translations in other languages for individual words. Maybe I really should have translated “next” into Lithuanian and translated the result of that back into English and seen what I got for it.