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English as She Is Spoke

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Re: English as She Is Spoke

#41

Post by frozenlettuce »

ma2rten wrote: post #28
waiseristy wrote: post #15

Google translate still spits out some pretty funny translations Portuguese: Este lago parece-me bem piscoso. Vamos pescar para nos divertirmos. Google: This lake looks very fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun. Actual : This lake looks full of fish. Let's have some fun fishing.

DeepL (which is sometimes better than Google) returns almost the same translation: This lake looks pretty fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun. Maybe the language that the book uses is dated making those machine translation systems trip up?

"piscoso" is a very specific term (if I google that I get just dictionary entries, almost no actual use). Replacing it with "cheio de peixe" (full of fish) would make the translation much easier

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#42

Post by fredophile »

exolymph wrote: post #36
joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

YES. I'm stoked about David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation for that reason: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/030024844X/ref=ox_sc_sav... > Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts' impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hi…

This might not have been common in the past but it isn't a new thing. I know my dad had a copy of the new testament that had the original Greek on one line and a word by word translation on the next. Not the most readable translation or layout but interesting if you wanted to get closer to the original writing.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#43

Post by siltpotato »

russellbeattie wrote: post #21

An interesting cultural phenomenon is taking place because of automated translation services like Google Translate. I learned of it in another thread on HN a few months ago. People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly. This is one of those interesting side effects of tech on culture that is not immediately obvious, I think. It's basicall…

Funny thing, I tend to write in a way that looks like a literal translation from a text that never was, especially in fiction but also in online conversations.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#44

Post by [deleted] »

madrox wrote: post #24

A similarly unintentional comedy in translation was a book I found several years ago that I believe was an autotranslation: "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?". The amazon reviews are similarly hilarious. https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...

[deleted]

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#45

Post by andai »

colanderman wrote: post #26
haecceity wrote: post #7

> Mark Twain said of English as She Is Spoke that "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."[6] Maybe a weekend playing with gpt-3 will prove otherwise. Edit: nevermind it's not even grammatical

> it's not even grammatical That's what GPT-2 is for! " To craunch a marmoset , it may take less than two hours. But a brindle should be done within five." " You mistake you! It is a frog. It is one of the most powerful of the edible frogs,' Jadon said as he dragged its body slowly toward the throne." " That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing. This fish filled with colors,…

Did you pre-train it on anything?

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#47

Post by tkgally »

russellbeattie wrote: post #21

An interesting cultural phenomenon is taking place because of automated translation services like Google Translate. I learned of it in another thread on HN a few months ago. People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly. This is one of those interesting side effects of tech on culture that is not immediately obvious, I think. It's basicall…

> People are realizing that what they write will be translated by machine and are adjusting their written language accordingly.

Machine translation is becoming part of foreign-language education, too. In Japan, some teachers of English have started introducing their students to MT and showing them how to use it to communicate better in English. One technique for a native Japanese speaker to use MT when writing English is to modify the Japanese input so that it is translated more accurately. For example, subjects are often omitted from Japanese sentences when they can be understood from the context, and MT regularly mistranslates such sentences; the English output improves if all subjects are made explicit in the Japanese input.

The use of MT in foreign-language education, however, makes some educators and students uncomfortable, as it is not yet known whether reliance on MT when studying a foreign language hinders, helps, or has no effect on long-term language acquisition.

A paper discussing these and related issues is here:

https://researchmap.jp/multidatabases/multidatabase_contents...

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#48

Post by mduncs »

exolymph wrote: post #36
joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

YES. I'm stoked about David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation for that reason: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/030024844X/ref=ox_sc_sav... > Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts' impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hi…

If you're stoked for that, then I would be remiss to not say something about Robert Alter's one man translation of the Hebrew Bible.

From wiki: "Alter's translation aims to convey the literary style of the original Hebrew text in English, recreating as much as possible its poetic rhythms and metaphors"

I think many of the Psalms and Ecclesiastes in particular are more beautifully rendered in his translation

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#49

Post by livueta »

madrox wrote: post #24

A similarly unintentional comedy in translation was a book I found several years ago that I believe was an autotranslation: "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?". The amazon reviews are similarly hilarious. https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...

I have a copy of this! I found it in a used bookstore years ago and had to grab it.

I'm pretty sure it's not auto-translated: like the sibling said, the first half-ish of the book is a verbatim collection of Usenet posts of the author, from 1999, writing in his characteristic broken English, earnestly laying out his anus-constricting theories while getting mildly trolled.

The rest of it is a screed in the same style. Opening to a random page (really, didn't have to look for samples), we see

> Besides shooting out a big blank from your buttock, you can feel as if your root chakra leaked sweet hot mucus. You can feel your root chakra as if it were an exciting womb. Cabala says "human being could have lived on the earth of high temperature long ago years as a human being of immaterial hermaphrodite". I think there has been the imprint of immaterial hermaphrodite in our physical body.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's closer to Time Cube via English as a second language than bad/autotranslation per se - as far as I can tell it was originally written in English as there doesn't appear to be anything with a similar title in Japanese by anyone with that name, and there's a fair amount of common English-written-by-Japanese-speakers grammatical errors and other smells.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#50

Post by whym »

joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

You are thinking about foreignization, which is more common (but still not really common) in the translation of literary fictions than that of subtitles. I think most movies don't do that because they target casual audience who is not ready to consume too much foreignization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_and_foreignizati...

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