BBC Learnings · Section 2

The technology of translation

Rob, I'm writing a letter to a friend in Spain and I need some help. Do you know the Spanish for it's raining?

Level: B2 · 83 sentences

Transcript

  1. Rob, I'm writing a letter to a friend in Spain and I need some help.
  2. Do you know the Spanish for it's raining?
  3. Don't worry, I have this new app.
  4. I just hold up my phone, scan the word I want translated.
  5. Esta lloviendo is the Spanish for it's raining.
  6. Amazing! In this programme we're discussing language technologies – computers that can translate between languages.
  7. Modern software like Google Translate has transformed how we learn foreign languages,
  8. bringing us closer to a world where language is no longer a barrier to communication.
  9. But how well do these computers know what we really mean to say?
  10. Well, later we'll find out exactly what machines can and can't translate.
  11. And, as usual, we'll be learning some new vocabulary as well.
  12. But first, I have a question for you, Sam.
  13. The translation app I used just now is very recent,
  14. but there's a long history of computer mistranslations – times when computers got it badly wrong.
  15. In 1987, the American airline Braniff ran television adverts promoting the all-leather seats installed on their flights to Mexico.
  16. But how was its fly in leather advertising slogan mistranslated into Spanish?
  17. Did the advert say A, fly in lava,
  18. B, fly on a cow, or C, fly naked?
  19. I have a feeling it might be C, fly naked.
  20. OK Sam, I'll reveal the correct answer later in the programme.
  21. Computer software used to rely on rules-based translation,
  22. applying the grammar rules of one language to another.
  23. That worked fine for simple words and phrases,
  24. but what happens when a translator comes across more complex language?
  25. For example, metaphors – expressions used to describe one thing by comparing it to another.
  26. Lane Green is a language journalist and the author of the book Talk on the Wild Side.
  27. Here he explains to BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth
  28. how apps like Google Translate allow users to manually translate metaphors.
  29. If I say it's raining cats and dogs
  30. and it literally translates está lloviendo perros y gatos in Spanish,
  31. that won't make any sense.
  32. But I think somebody at Google will have inputted the phrase llueve a cántaros,
  33. which is the phrase it's raining pitchers or it's raining jugs of water,
  34. so that the whole chunk, raining cats and dogs,
  35. is translated into the equivalent metaphor in Spanish.
  36. Lane wants to translate the phrase it's raining cats and dogs something that people sometimes say when it's raining heavily.
  37. It wouldn't make sense to translate this phrase into another language literally,
  38. word by word.
  39. One solution is to translate the whole idiom as a chunk or a large part of text or language.
  40. This works for phrases and idioms that people
  41. regularly use in the same way
  42. because they can be taught to a computer.
  43. But what happens when someone like a poet writes a completely new sentence which has never been written before?
  44. Lane Green thinks that even the smartest software couldn't deal with that,
  45. as he told Michael Rosen, poet and presenter of BBC Radio 4's Word of Mouth.
  46. But if a poet writes a new one,
  47. then the machine is not going to pick it up and it's going to have a struggle, isn't it?
  48. Sorry, I'm sticking up for poetry here and trying to claim that it's untranslatable.
  49. Can you hear what I'm doing?
  50. I hear you.
  51. And, you know, in our war against the machines,
  52. our advantage is novelty and creativity.
  53. So you're right that machines will be great at anything that is wrote,
  54. anything that's already been done a million times.
  55. can be automated so you and I with our prefrontal cortexes
  56. can try to come up with phrases that'll flummox the computer
  57. and so keep our jobs.
  58. When we say machines learn a language,
  59. we really mean they have been trained to identify patterns in millions and millions of translations.
  60. Computers can only learn by rote, by memory,
  61. in order to repeat information rather than to properly understand it.
  62. This kind of rote learning can be easily automated – done by machines instead of humans.
  63. But it's completely different from human learning requiring creative thinking,
  64. which would flummox or confuse even the most sophisticated machine.
  65. Bad news for translation software,
  66. but good news for humans who use different languages in their jobs – like us!
  67. Yes, if only Braniff Airlines had relied on human translators,
  68. they might have avoided an embarrassing situation.
  69. Ah, in your question you asked how Braniff's television advertisement,
  70. Fly in Leather, was translated into Spanish.
  71. I guessed it was mistranslated as Fly Naked.
  72. Which was the correct answer?
  73. Braniff translated its fly in leather slogan as fly en cuero,
  74. which sounds like Spanish slang for fly naked.
  75. OK, let's recap the vocabulary from this programme about language translations
  76. which are automated – done by machines instead of humans.
  77. Often found in poetry,
  78. a metaphor is a way of describing something by reference to something else.
  79. When it's raining heavily, you might use the idiom, it's raining cats and dogs.
  80. A chunk is a large part of something.
  81. Wrote learning involves memorising information which you repeat but don't really understand.
  82. And finally, if someone is flummoxed,
  83. they're so confused that they don't know what to do.