机器翻译风险高人工投入不可少

4次大中小

Getting lost in the translation

机器翻译风险高人工投入不可少 Relying on online translation tools can be a risky business, especially if you expect too much of it. For the time being, might translation be something best left to the humans?

Earlier this month the small German town of Homberg-an-der-Efze, north of Frankfurt, had to pulp an entire print run of its English-language tourism brochure - after officials used an internet translating tool to translate the German text.

According to one report, the brochure was "rendered meaningless" by the online tool.

Martin Wagner, mayor of Homberg-an-der-Efze, admits that the town made a "blunder". As a result of officials trying to save money by getting the Internet to do a translator's job, a total of 7500 brochures had to be binned.

This story highlights some of the pitfalls of translating online. There are many instant translation tools on the web - but they are best used for individual words and short phrases, rather than for brochures, books or anything complex.

For example, one of the joys of the web is that it grants you access to an array of foreign news sources. Yet if you were to use a translation tool to try to make sense of such reports, you could end up with a rather skewed and surreal view of the world.

Why is foreign text "rendered meaningless" when passed through an online translation tool? According to Sabine Reul, who runs a Frankfurt-based translation company, translation tools have limited uses - and problems arise when web users expect too much from them.

"A translation tool works for some things," says Reul. "Say a British company wants to order a box of screws from a German supplier. A sentence like 'We need one box of a certain type of screw' is something that a machine could translate reasonably accurately - though primitively."

Yet when it comes to translating blocks of text - words and sentences that convey thoughts and sentiments - online tools are bound to fail, she adds. "Beyond simple sentences, the online process simply doesn't work because machines don't understand grammar and semantics, never mind idiom and style."

"Language is not a system of signs in the mechanical sense of the word", says Reul. "It is a living medium that is used to convey thought. And that is where machines fail. Human input is indispensable as long as computers cannot think."

Reul and other translators look forward to the day when clever computers might help to ease their workload - but that time has not arrived yet.

"It would be nice if computers could do the job. And certainly the quest for machine translation has prompted a lot of linguistic research that may prove valuable in unforeseen ways. But experience to date confirms that even the most subtle computer program doesn't think - and you need to be able to think in order to translate."

Until the dawn of thinking computers, online translation tools are best reserved for words, basic sentences and useful holiday phrases. For tourism brochures, newspaper reports and the rest, you will have to rely on some old-fashioned "human input".

依靠在线翻译工具是比较危险的，尤其是你对它抱有过高的期望，那就更危险了。目前，翻译工作最好还是由人类来做吗？

本月初，法兰克福北部的德国小镇Homberg-an-der-Efze不得不销毁一整批英文版旅游手册，因为这些手册是官员们采用一种网络翻译工具从德语翻译过来的。

有报道说：在线工具译出来的手册 “毫无意义”。

Homberg-an-der-Efze镇长马丁·瓦格纳承认他们犯了一个“大错”。官员们之所以借助互联网来完成翻译工作，是想节省开支，结果7500本旅游手册不得不作废。

这个例子突出体现了在线翻译的一些缺陷。互联网上有很多即时翻译工具，但是它们最擅长翻译的是个别单词和短语，而不是宣传册、书籍或任何复杂的资料。

例如，使用互联网的乐趣在于它帮你获得大量国外新闻资料。但是如果你打算用翻译工具来翻译这些报道，你最终看到的只能是一个曲解了的、超现实主义的世界。

为什么外语原文通过在线工具翻译后就变得“毫无意义”了呢？据法兰克福一家翻译公司的老板萨拜因·勒尔说，翻译工具的用途是有限的，当使用者期望值过高的时候，问题就出现了。

勒尔说：“翻译工具只能翻译某些东西，例如一家英国公司想要从德国供应商那里定购一盒螺丝钉，其中有这样一句话：‘我们需要一盒某型号的螺丝钉。’机器能够相当准确地翻译这样的句子——尽管比较简单粗糙。”

然而当翻译带有思想和感情的段落和句子时，在线翻译工具注定会失败。她补充说：“除了简单的句子之外，在线翻译其无法完成他的内容，因为机器无法理解语法和语义，更不用说习惯用语和文体了。”

勒尔说：“语言不是机械的单词符号系统，而是一种可以用来表达思想的生动的媒介。这是机器所做不到的。只要机器无法思考，人力投入就必不可少。”

勒尔和其它翻译工作者们希望有一天聪明的电脑能够帮助它们减轻工作压力——但是现在还不是时候。

“如果电脑可以做翻译工作，那就太好了。对于机器翻译的不断探索无疑已经激发了大量语言学的研究，这些研究可能在一些不可预见的方面是颇有价值的。但是，到目前为止的经验证明即使是最精确的电脑程序也无法思考，翻译工作则需要你去思考。”