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| /picture: New Yourk Times/ |
“Translation can be done by anyone” - this idea appears
to have become a general misconception which has been ravaging the translation
profession and exasperating its representatives. The world has already admitted
that translation cannot be done by machines. Now, Luis von Ahn, the founder of Duolingo, thinks that language learners would make
excellent translators. How wrong
Mr. von Ahn!
It is tempting to think that if you know a foreign language, you are able
to translate. Why not? If you know what a word or a sentence means in a foreign
language, you can easily convert it into your mother tongue. You can for
example start translating correspondence at a simple level – saying what the
author of a letter meant. Straightforward as it sounds, even a simple letter
can pose a struggle, as there’s the tone, feelings and unexpressed intentions
that need to be taken into consideration, meaning that the translator needs to
read between the lines and skilfully render its sense in another language,
really anyone can do it?
Another misconception about
translation is that it is just a matter of finding words in a dictionary. Well,
in that case everyone can flip pages of a lexicon and have a random pick from a
word list. How would a language learner know which word to choose if three or
more have a very similar meaning? Only professional translators can pick up on these
subtleties and render them in the target text. The choice of words in
translation is not determined solely by their meaning but equally by the
register, tone, context and cultural background for that matter. Surely,
studying a foreign language is not enough, unless it is supplied by pragmatics
and applied linguistics.
Now, in the light of these facts, imagine that an army of language learners
will translate the web, i.e. texts that you will later on read, gain knowledge
from and sometimes even rely on. Inaccurate
translation, poor language and lack of cohesion will definitely make the
websites content deteriorate linguistically. And since we are exposed to the
language of the web on a daily basis, it will influence the way we communicate.
The philosophy behind Duolingo was explained in the New York Times some time ago. The author of the article says that “ For online content
providers wanting translations, Duolingo offers, for now at least, free
labor.” – for now? Does it mean that in the future, companies will have to
pay even for translation done, with all respect, by people who can’t do it?
Now consider this: “Because it is still in its early days, there are no
independent assessments available of how accurate or efficient it can be.” No
one will assess accuracy and efficiency...hmmm Essentially, you’ll be buying a
pig in a poke. And I mean buying because: “People and companies can
submit their content to Duolingo for translation, a service the company may
begin to charge for.” Seriously,
would you agree to be operated on by a 1st year student of medicine
and pay for it?
Mr von Ahn – the founder of Duolingo explains its philosophy: “You’re
learning a language and at the same time, helping to translate the Web. You’re
learning by doing.” Right, great idea but don’t make other people rely on what
the students of Duolingo have learnt and more importantly, don’t charge anyone
for that.
He also compared this idea to using machine translation, “Google Translate,
by contrast, relies entirely on machines to do the work — and while it usually
captures the essence of a piece of text, it can sometimes produce bewildering
passages.” Well, on this one, I couldn’t agree with you more Mr von Ahn.
However, I am more than worried by reading this: “Mr. von Ahn is thinking
of taking on Wikipedia as his first translation project.” – please don’t fiddle
with Wikipedia! Too many people rely on it as a source of knowledge and reference
source.
“For Duolingo to work well, it needs a huge crowd of learners. The more
proficient they become, the greater the chances of accurate translations.”
First of all, getting an accurate translation is not winning a lottery ticket;
no one should speak of it in ‘chances’ terms. Secondly, by saying that
translations will probably get better as the learners progress, Mr von Ahn actually
said that at the beginning – when the learners are just beginners - the
translations they’ll produce will be even poorer. You couldn’t ask for a better
advert, could you?
