Lost in Translations

It’s pretty well established no matter which philosophy or science you prescribe to that the human family comes from a common ancestor. Biologically and anatomically, it makes sense. Lingually, however, there is much mystery.

It’s understandable that different words exist in different languages—that in itself is not odd. It gets weirder when you look at the syntax of different languages, wondering why some languages decide to switch around what-belongs-where. (Example: In English, we would say ‘The Red Ball’. In Spanish, it would translate to ‘The Ball Red’. In Sign Language, the same phrase is “There, The Ball [that is] Red.”) Then you have languages that have common word translations, but the word carries a different meaning in a different language. In some cases, different forms of language exist in different languages. In Hebrew, they had an additional tense that denotes severity or intensity of words.

Because of this nonsense-soup of language, translating from one language to another is a wild and complicated feat. You can’t just simply substitute words like a cryptogram puzzle—you have to understand the full sentence and transliterate it into something that means the same thing in another language. ..

Which is why services like Babelfish fail so hard.

Really, they can’t be blamed, as asserted above. In certain instances, it can work just fine—such as single word or simple phrase translations. However, oftentimes mass confusion results from trying to translate a phrase using it (say, from English to Hungarian) and then saying the phrase to someone who only speaks Hungarian. You might get slapped or arrested if you aren’t careful. (There’s a Monty Python skit that revolves around this —“Would you like to go back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?”)

Worse, when you translate something from English to another language, then back to English, you can see for yourself the massacre you have performed. It’s like the whole copy-of-a-copy problem that cloning sci-fi stories bark about. So below, I’ve done just that: I have taken very famous pieces of literature and speech, converted them to a language, then immediately back to English. In fact, just for the fun of it, I took some of the simpler phrases (that translated pretty well) around the block a few times, in and out of different languages. Make a game of it and see if you can tell what the quotes below are supposed to be:

“Of the freedom or the death.” (From English to French to Portuguese and back)

“It gives to an individual a fish, eats for a day. It teaches to an individual a fish, eats by the period of time.” (From English to Greek to French and back)

“Me first rises and the nation comfort truth one meaning--there is a dream which will live at the outside of it creed: In order to be self-explanatory this truth in compliance with us is preserved: It all people equally, was created. “ (English to Korean and back)

“Those which can make because of your country there are no, you ask, any which your country can make because of you ask” (English to Japanese and back)

“Once she is boring at midnight, but it considered that he is weak and it is tired” (English to Mandarin, back to English, then to Spanish and back)

“You speak smooth and transported a large stick” (English-Italian-French-Dutch-back)

“I've obtained a matzo in vain coconut. Here they rise in feet in file.” (English-French-Italian-back)

“You and I, little-one, [zhivushch] for the dreams, lifin’ for the love, living free of charge” (English-Russian-back)

Seemed to get harder as I went down—mostly because the last one was an inside joke that few will get anyhow. As a final example, I will take a simple sentence and run it through about 12 languages to see where it comes out: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”

“The fast overhasty change of the fox what [chuvisco] is, which concerns the dog of [l' okniro]”

Seems I lost some words completely in this round-robin. I’m going on the assumption chuvisco is brown and l’okniro is lazy.

When I was planning this article, I thought that one simple translation back-and-forth would be enough to obfuscate a thought. I was actually surprised to find that a sentence held its value pretty well until I threw it into a language blender. Still, the point is pretty clear: Language is stupid and translation is dumb.

-Zerom