We often present clients with guidance on how to work with interpreters, and frequently get asked about AI. This is because many people are waiting for the day that they can simply go online and use AI to seamlessly translate between two different languages, but we would like to say it out loud here: THAT DAY HAS YET TO COME.

Please also check out this flip-book we’ve made https://heyzine.com/flip-book/20de67a12a.html

Please also check out our playlist for Chinese localization case studies: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO-QGEbwcTr14xqfiR38Mp-EhHAmclsUY

We localized the Interpreters and Music video into traditional Chinese as an example to compare translation accuracy between humans versus AI and to identify some classic AI issues.

One of the biggest weaknesses of AI is that it often struggles with names. For instance, the name “Laura” was translated into both “蘿拉” and “勞拉.” When we saw this inconsistency in names, we looked at each other with amusement because this happens all the time. Some may say AI spelling names incorrectly isn’t a big deal since it’s an easy fix. However, for those people, we’d like to share a real-life example.

In a lease contract we worked on, Paragraph 1 said that the landlord shall be known as ‘A’ and the tenant as ‘B’. Paragraph 2 called the landlord ‘C’ and the tenant ‘D’. This was a document with 30,000 words that a client asked us to quote for reviewing the translation, which had probably been done by an AI. Just in terms of reviewing names, how much effort would it take to find out if there were places that call the landlord “E” and the tenant “F” and so on? Not to mention all the work it would take to find other mistakes that humans typically need several rounds of review to detect.

Our analysis also uncovered that AI defaults to using the pronoun “你,” referring to males and offering no female form “妳.”

AI have translated love song titles like “Suddenly Missing You” and “Stuck on You” into traditional Chinese, using the male form. The male singers may not prefer using the male form of “you” in their love song titles. Otherwise, a native speaker in traditional Chinese would feel kind of strange, reading it.

We inserted line breaks on messages that appear in the video. With line breaks, AI seemed to lose the context of the lines.

Line breaks are important. We are often requested to insert line breaks in Asian language marketing materials. Take Japanese line breaks as an example. There are some basic rules for line breaks or how to break words up, but at the same time, there are a lot of exceptions, which humans can easily catch if they understand Japanese, but not AI. In other words, humans break things apart (debriefing) and put them together in a creative way, which AI is just not capable of.

It turns out that AI struggles to translate any segment accurately and, at times, produces unnatural and contextually absurd translations. As shown in the screenshot below, even with a relatively short source text, the quality of AI translation was unbelievably subpar.

AI translated “interpretation” as “explanation” due to a lack of context.
AI translated “Performance” to machine’s performance rather than that of the interpreter’s.
AI mistakenly translated the meaning of “like” as “to be fond of” instead of “similar to.”
AI word-for-word translation for “big heart” doesn’t make sense to a Chinese audience.

It’s clear to us that AI is not able to handle messages that are broken down by line breaks. This then leads us to a question: How well could AI handle entire messages without line breaks?

We conducted a retest by removing all the line breaks on messages. In this attempt, the text was formatted in a more machine-friendly way to enhance AI’s understanding. But even so, post-editing remained an essential step, with 80% of the segments requiring significant human intervention. Without this crucial step, AI translations either come across as rigid and less relatable to our audience, or contain mistranslations. Below are some examples.

Example 1:
The AI translation appears rather stiff because the word “sync” was translated literally. The audience might wonder what it means to “sync” one language to another. Human translators are able to further explain the context of sync, that is, interpreters “listen to one language and convey it in another language.”

Example 2:
AI translated “more emotionally acute” as “more impatient,” which not only deviates from the intended meaning of the source, but also negates the impact of the word “music”. During post-editing, we replaced it with “more emotionally sensitive,” which is more contextually accurate.

Example 3:
AI did word-for-word translation again. It doesn’t sound like what a normal person would say in Chinese. As a dynamic language, Chinese favors verbs over nouns and usually keeps sentences short. Therefore, in post-editing, we restructured the sentence to make it fit a typical Chinese writing style, and flow more naturally.

Example 4:
AI’s translation of “concentration” lacked clarity. Without referring to the source, it was hard to grasp the intended meaning. So, we opted for a more precise choice of words.

Example 5:
AI does a literal translation, full of ambiguity and rigidity, which doesn’t make clear sense to a Chinese audience.

Translation is supposed to flow naturally to engage the audience. It is the more immersive and relatable experiences that make humans feel comfortable. These are exactly the areas where we as interpreters and translators can contribute to.

There may be a lot of gloom and doom from some in the community who think that their jobs are at risk, however, the reality is that we’re training AI to speak our language, but they aren’t able to fully understand it like we can. They can process it, try and find the corresponding pattern in their database, and come to a conclusion that they think is right, but they won’t always be. That’s where interpreters and translators will always have the edge over AI. Human creativity and our ability to understand what’s important, and the culture embedded in it, enables us to make sure that we are conveying the intended message.

We tried one of the latest AI platforms to translate one of our office videos into Mandarin.

While we were impressed by the seamless process and the voice cloning feature that enhanced voice modulation, we couldn’t help but notice pronunciation and translation errors in the generated video. Given that Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, tones can become a source of misunderstanding if not pronounced correctly. The chosen video introduces the rental service of our conference room, making “conference” a high-frequency word. However, throughout the video, AI consistently pronounces the Chinese word for “conference,” as “memory,” with tones differing from the former. Also, “state-of-the-art” in Chinese is pronounced the same way that “cash” is. This could undoubtedly complicate the message we aim to convey if left alone.

The translation issues we caught are mostly recurring problems caused by machine translation as discussed above. Take the first sentence as an example. AI translated “Looking for a conference room to have a meeting over video or in person?” as “Can you look for a conference room via video or in person meeting?” AI’s rendition deviates from the original meaning, which is likely caused by line breaks, leading to confusion and miscommunication. Such discrepancies underscore the importance of post-editing and human intervention to refine machine-generated translations.

Our conclusion becomes clear.

In this age of AI becoming more prevalent, humans just need to work smarter to beat out AI. As individuals in an evolving world, it’s important to accept technological advancements, but also understand that AI lacks creativity, individuality, improvisation capability, and the understanding of human cultures. That’s how humans can break through and go beyond AI’s limitations.

The team at Monterey Language Services would like to send you our warm holiday greetings.  We wish you happy holidays & a healthy and successful 2011!  

Thank you for your continued support and friendship.  We look forward to furthering our relationship in the coming year.

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Happy New Year Greetings from Monterey Language Services

At Monterey Language Services, we are always searching for interesting tidbits to lift our spirits. Here is one good example. 

Deborah Fallows has a Ph.D. in linguistics.  She decided to immerse herself into Chinese culture by learning Chinese.  In her new book, Dreaming in Chinese:  Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love and Language, Fallows provides intriguing insights into how Chinese think and act as reflected in their language.  We found a delightful interview she had with NPR in which she explains why Chinese talk to each other so bluntly.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=129552512&m=129556812

Why do we translate Deutschland into Germany
in English?

By Emily Frye

While studying abroad in France my sister and I decided to take a trip to Munich, Germany. While crossing the border by train a policewoman asked what we were doing in Europe.  I said that we were students in France and were visiting a friend in Munich.  She replied in English, “So you are studying in Frenchland.”  Frenchland? We thought she obviously didn’t know English very well.  However, later I realized the policewoman had been quite logical.  After all, Germany in German is Deutschland, so the term Frenchland didn’t sound strange anymore.  But, it did get me thinking…

Why do we translate Deutschland into Germany in English?  A little research unveils that it’s not really a translation, but a consequence of the geopolitical history of the region.  Julius Caesar had borrowed the term “German” from the Gauls. They had used it for the tribes who tried to invade their territory from across the Rhine.  It most likely meant “neighbor” or “men of the forest.” Caesar used the term to coin “Germania,” which simply described the entire region beyond the Rhine and Danube (present day Germany).  This led me to question the origin of many other country “translations”, such as:  Hungary for Magyarország, Croatia for Hrvatska, or Finland for Suomi.

One of the most intriguing however is in the Czech language.  In Czech, Germany is Německo.  The old Slavic tribes called the groups of people that lived by the Rhine River, the Nemetes.  In old Slavic, Nemetes literally means “mute.”  For the Slavic people, the language of the Germanic tribes was incomprehensible, so they appropriately named the region after its “mute” inhabitants.

Source: Schulze, Hagen (1998). Germany: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 4.

The New York Times Sunday magazine section has a fascinating article entitled “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” which discusses recent research on how one’s mother tongue shapes one’s experience of the world.  A must read.

“If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor’s sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions.”

“Languages like Spanish, French, German and Russian not only oblige you to think about the sex of friends and neighbors, but they also assign a male or female gender to a whole range of inanimate objects quite at whim…Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her?”

“The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter…”

Reference:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html

MLS team members are professional, dedicated and passionate about languages and foreign cultures. We are oriented towards finding the best words for the best translations. As individuals, we take pride in being cultural communicators and in promoting international understanding.

Offering translations from every language into English and vice versa, our company plays an important role in cross-border business communication. We provide translation, interpretation, copy-editing, proofreading, website localization, software localization, multimedia transcription, dubbing, subtitling, foreign language desktop publishing, and more.

At MLS, resources abound to work with foreign languages. Our network is global, and yet locally we are within easy reach of the top language experts in the world. The language history of this area is showcased in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, where immigrants of almost every ethnicity worked. The area has developed into a hub of translation and interpretation education and services. MLS captures the essence of what the Monterey Bay Region offers.

The firm’s website www.montereylanguages.com contains numerous blogs by team members.  Here we recount our experiences working with languages and display a wealth of understanding of how language expresses culture in different parts of the world.

MLS handles all your languages needs professionally. For translation of documents, interpretation for diverse settings or for any other language or culture-related services, email us at info@montereylanguages.com and find out how we can help you:

•    optimize and better formulate your ideas, arguments and concepts
•    enrich your personal or your company’s profile, story or presentation
•    increase your personal or your company’s marketability

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations is officially translated by the French as the Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme.  If we translate this word for word back into English it is The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man.  Just men?  Are our French friends stuck in some male-chauvinist society?

Emily Frye, one of our team members and a translation student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies shares Rama Yade’s revelation of an interesting cultural nuance behind the translation.  This story provides a peek into the rich culture of the French language, revealing that being “French” is much more than long lunches, great wine and socialist medicine.

Full Article by Emily Frye

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations is officially translated by the French as the Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme.  If we translate this word for word back into English it is The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man.  Just men?  What happened to the French Feminist movement of the 1970s?  Are our French friends stuck in some male-chauvinist society?

The answer is, most certainly not.  Any French person would agree that the “rights of man” undeniably includes women.  So why have the French kept this outwardly politically-incorrect term?  We find a possible answer deep in France’s cultural history.

Rama Yade, in her book on the subject, points to the term’s historical importance in regard to the French Revolution and its connection to the ideals fought for at that time.  These ideals would be at risk of slipping away if the term was changed.

This discussion brings to light that the interesting nuances of a culture can be revealed through its language.  And a deeper look at the French language will certainly reveal that being “French” is much more than long lunches, great wine and socialist medicine.

Reference: Yade, Rama. Les droits de l’homme expliqués aux enfants de 7 à 77 ans. Seuil 23 October 2008

There is nothing more frustrating for the linguistically-challenged than watching a film without subtitles.  At the same time, there is really nothing quite like hearing actors speak their parts in one’s native language.

But one organization has come up a creative solution.

Mozilla is sponsoring a new program, Universal Subtitles, which makes it easy for anyone, anyplace to create and view subtitles and request translations of videos:

http://www.mozilla.org/causes/subtitles/?utm_source=gsnippet&utm_content=subtitle&utm_campaign=s010410

Recognizing the power of film in fostering global community and intercultural communication, we wholeheartedly endorse this initiative.