Go verbatim at your own peril!
Written by Hero on 6/15/2009 10:48:00 PMI have been moonlighting for the past two weeks for my old employer. I have had the pleasure of checking the quality of thousands and thousands of translated English>Malay phrases done by some freelancers. Some are very good in transferring the meanings of English utterances into the most appropriate Malay counterparts (and at the same time practical for a machine translation system - which is damn hard to do and another topic by itself!). One must remember that a machine translation system does not aim to replace human translators, but instead it complements their efforts. I myself have been using Citcat's machine translation system all the time and it has greatly reduced the time I had to spent for groundwork translation. How great a reduce, you asked? Well, in most occasions, I managed to finish translating in one afternoon what was supposed to be a 3 nights work. Arguably, most of the choices of words produced by a machine translation system may not satisfy all possible usages but it is (statistically) the best, given their popular real life occurrences (I am referring to the underlying corpus). Yet, one who does a QC over them cannot help but stumbling into some that are just plain tragic. I did mention a particularly shocking one to my supervisor and he said that it would be a great topic for my blog post. So, I am going to share it with you all. Just this one. This is a reminder that such a thing can happen to us all. Translating one or two paragraphs is easy. Try a running list of 5000 phrases. Even the most able translator will lose focus. I would know. I have been there.
This is an example of what I found:
duck breast > buah dada itik
:p
Logically, semantically or even linguistically.. it is not wrong. No. Strike that. It is not wrong, period! So what is the problem, here?
You're right. Appropriateness. Or what language people would refer to as registers or laras bahasa. It is just not an appropriate Malay replacement for breast given the accompanying noun duck. You never see a suckling duck, have you? But the word breast was probably used by the first duck eaters (purely hearsay) just to explain the meat area that is located between the wings; in connotation with what lies between human arms. No problem there should the noun was say.. Amy's, Rohaya's or Yin Ping's. :o (just example lorr.. nobody you know.. it's Amy Lim, Rohaya Kassim and Poon Yin Ping @ Ah Poon.. so don't put up my handsome pic on your dart board just quite yet..).
Anyway, I can only imagine a situation in MidValley LG lunch area where a dark (and somewhat) handsome chap popularly known as Cus tries to stick to his pure linguistic ideals, whenever he can.
Cus: Kak, nasi bungkus satu!
Kak: Lauk apa, dik?
Cus: Aaa.. kasi kuah kari tu. Ayam goreng satu.
Kak: Nak bahagian mana, dik?
Cus: Nyamnyam.. bagi saya buah dada, kak.
PANG!!!
PANG!!! PANG!!! PANG!!! (these are from others in the line..poor Cus..)
DUSH!!! (a rather late flying kick from Kak Nas..)
The world is indeed very cruel towards linguists.
This is an example of what I found:
duck breast > buah dada itik
:p
Logically, semantically or even linguistically.. it is not wrong. No. Strike that. It is not wrong, period! So what is the problem, here?
You're right. Appropriateness. Or what language people would refer to as registers or laras bahasa. It is just not an appropriate Malay replacement for breast given the accompanying noun duck. You never see a suckling duck, have you? But the word breast was probably used by the first duck eaters (purely hearsay) just to explain the meat area that is located between the wings; in connotation with what lies between human arms. No problem there should the noun was say.. Amy's, Rohaya's or Yin Ping's. :o (just example lorr.. nobody you know.. it's Amy Lim, Rohaya Kassim and Poon Yin Ping @ Ah Poon.. so don't put up my handsome pic on your dart board just quite yet..).
Anyway, I can only imagine a situation in MidValley LG lunch area where a dark (and somewhat) handsome chap popularly known as Cus tries to stick to his pure linguistic ideals, whenever he can.
Cus: Kak, nasi bungkus satu!
Kak: Lauk apa, dik?
Cus: Aaa.. kasi kuah kari tu. Ayam goreng satu.
Kak: Nak bahagian mana, dik?
Cus: Nyamnyam.. bagi saya buah dada, kak.
PANG!!!
PANG!!! PANG!!! PANG!!! (these are from others in the line..poor Cus..)
DUSH!!! (a rather late flying kick from Kak Nas..)
The world is indeed very cruel towards linguists.
| Posted in »
13 comments: Responses to “ Go verbatim at your own peril! ”
By Anonymous on 12:00 AM, June 16, 2009
ni rohaya kassim ye... amboi amboi. ni ada satu lagi translation of the year... the translated phrase was [kerja-kerja letupan] dan [anak kucing basah]. cuba teka apa original phrase. wa sakit perut lagi sampai harini bila ingat betapa naifnya sang penterjemah tu. maafkanlah mereka yg translate tu golongan2 warga emas...
By kruel74 on 7:58 AM, June 16, 2009
Bro, my wife cari translation work. Dia ambik that ITNM nya course tapi susah betul nak dpt keja. Ko gurukan dia 2,3 bulan ke. Aku hantar lah pulut kuning n ayam golek sekali. Serious ni. email aku kat kruel74@gmail.com
By asam on 11:15 AM, June 16, 2009
yo bro yo yo...ter biahhhh aku yo...bini aku baca blog ni dulu dari aku yo yo...bro ...wiki wiki...
By claymon on 11:26 AM, June 16, 2009
emmm...kau rase si Cus tu dapat tak ape yang dia hajatkan dari Kak gerai makan tu...selepas all the PANGSSSSS...???....Nasi bungkus tu leeee...
By Anonymous on 6:15 PM, June 16, 2009
along, xde ayat lain ka nak bagi eg...nak gak use that word...apa gatai tangan ka...
By Hero on 11:50 PM, June 16, 2009
anonymous 1 @ kak aya: hmm.. tatau nak teka la kak.. apa dia original phrase?? share ler..
kruel74: boleh, insyaAllah.. over a few coffee sessions pun boleh perturun sedikit banyak.. nanti aku email kau..
asam @ cus: aaa.. apa komen wife kau? huhu.. harap2 kau dah tak perlu tido dalam keta dah skrg ni.. apa2 hal hola aku kalau perlu tempat berlabuh, ok? :p
claymon: ??? nape kau guna nick ala2 email cus? anyway.. aku rasa cus dapat apa yg dia hajati tu.. dan prob lebih lagi.. tapi aku takleh cite sini pasal wife dia pantau blog nih.. :p
anonymous 2: aaa.. ni angah ke ni? alaa.. saja je.. example.. tu pun kira nasib tak letak nama angah gak jadi contoh.. :p hmm.. skrg baru nak komen ye? bz ke? take care.. (kalau angah la.. manalah tahu ada yg nyamar lak..)
By 啤酒花™_J on 9:11 AM, June 17, 2009
OUgh!ooooughhh its a CRUEL world. Courteous and merciful to others? Who really cares??? Perhaps, there are still some...how many is a question!
By Hero on 10:19 PM, June 17, 2009
:(
hola me sometime.. we can catch up where we left off last time.. keje baik2 J.. banyak2 la bersabar..
By Anonymous on 11:30 AM, June 18, 2009
Aireen, Happy Birthday!
Semoga sihat2 selalu dan murah rezeki! ;)
By yabberleter on 11:35 AM, June 18, 2009
hmm... i rasa i kenal si rohaya kassim dan ah poon tu...
ada sorang tu siap nak mengadudombakan kita ni... (dia juga yg cite kat i haha) tu baru tak sempat reply satu 1 sms u dah risau lak...
si lim tu dah lama kenal u ler
By Hero on 4:08 PM, June 18, 2009
anonymous 3: besday angah ke?? biler?? laa.. saya tak tau.. sori.. happy birthday angah.. bak kata ahmad nisfu dalam 3 abdul, "semoga bertambah banyak kapal di laut"..
yabberleter: thank you for being such a sport.. tapi mula2 mmg risau bila u tak balas sms.. time tu cam pikir.. "alamak.. marah ke? mmg agak over remarks buah **** tu.." aaa.. sapa laa yg nak adudomba kita tu? :p
ps: sampaikan salam saya kat amy lim tu ye?
By Anonymous on 8:20 AM, June 24, 2009
laaa...angah ada leave comment earlier...nape x keluar...yes angah = a-----n....happy belated to u too...sori x wish earlier...m i seeing along this friday?
By Hero on 3:58 PM, June 24, 2009
takpe. terima kasih, angah. sama2 happy belated la kita.
pasal friday ni.. insyaAllah.. sayang kalau tak pegi.. transformers tuu.. :p