We talked about the convenience of having at hand, within ESI, a functionality that would truthfully indicate if the translation output was or was not successful. The convenience may turn into a pressing need if we’re not acquainted with the other language, even if we do know “just a little”. We mentioned how difficult it is for an English speaker to “translate” from English into Spanish when he understands nothing of the translation output. And vice versa.
We also mentioned that, since its inception, ESI PRO was created with the crosshairs on solving both these tasks:
- the task of achieving a reasonably accurate translation and,
- the task of indicating to the user if task (1) was successfully achieved
The Interpretation mechanism within ESI PRO, carries out this second task *.
Future Version 5.0 – brewing since 4 years ago in our development department—will change this mechanism in such a radical and innovative manner that not even we imagined possible at that moment. The new Interpretative functionality of ESI PRO will simply dazzle the User, as it has dazzled us, its creators. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves …
Currently, ESI PRO has an Interpretation mode that performs—although in a rudimentary manner—the function of indicating to the English-speaking user if what he/she obtains in Spanish makes any sense at all or if it requires editing.
Let’s see three types of examples,
- Translation: output is wrong,
- Original Text: ambiguous in English
- Original Text (in English) and Translation: both wrong
To start out with case (1), let’s look at a sentence that – for whatever reason – came out wrong in Spanish:
The sentence in Spanish has an innocent look and may seem to be well constructed, but…Watch Out! A Spanish speaker will immediately detect the inconsistency and will probably complain that, “This translator is no good! ”
What’s actually wrong with this translation is the interpretation of the word “kind”, which was translated as a noun (clase); the text needs it to function as an adjective (amable) in order to work. Furthermore, it translated “healthy” as “cuerdo”, where it should have been “saludable”.
Reading back the translation in Spanish, the English-speaking user, in theory, will not detect this slip-up. He will find out a few seconds later when he gets the Spanish speaker’s feedback complaining. Nevertheless, using the Interpretation system, he may be able to read in English the following rephrase (or paraphrase):
He is well-fed-, healthy, and sort simultaneously
…and will immediately see that there’s something very wrong with it.
(Will be continued….)
* Note: Interpretation is currently available only from English into Spanish. It is worth mentioning that, in all the translation software market, only ESI PRO offers the functionality of interactively editing the translations, sentence by sentence; consequently, it is the only one offering the Interpretation system. |
