Machine Translation

I can appreciate that it takes years of study and experience to be able to speak or write in a foreign language, and that many people in Japan and elsewhere are doing their darnedest to get it right by years of practice. But I don't have any patience for running your language through Altavista and filling in the holes with random words related to your industry. My dad is spearheading machine-aided translation at the UN (lexicons and databases to make human translators more efficient and consistent), but the fact remains that without a human, you're going to end up with mush. The latter situation is exemplified by the following, from the privacy policy of a Japanese travel agency I found on-line today:

An offer to the third person of the personal information: (1) We offer it by dispatching personal information mentioned in arrangement of the trip service that had you apply, and an application submitted to a procedure for the receipt of those service in the case of a trip application for in they transport / the lodging engine, the insurance company and an arrangement caretaker in the range where it is necessary or a procedure of the insurance to secure responsibility in our trip contract, expense at the time of the accident in the range where it is necessary by methods of the electronic mails or other methods.

This makes what comes afterwards seem downright lucid:

The arbitrariness of reporting personal information, and a result: The reporting of personal information is arbitrary: however, there is the case that we do not accept your proposal of trip application if you do not provide appropriate information to us.

"Do you agree?" the site asks me, pointedly . . .


Bien sûr qu'il est difficile d'apprendre une langue étrangère, mais pas d'excuses pour une "traduction" faite sur internet, comme ceci. Mon père a introduit beaucoup d'outils électroniques pour aider les traducteurs à traduire aux Nations unies, mais on a surtout besoin de traducteurs humains. Une machine à traduire ne donne rien d'utilisable. Les "traductions" français-anglais même sont quasiment incompréhensibles--du japonais "traduit" en anglais, c'est pratiquement des mots croisés.