Live from Congility: Simplified English and Machine Translation

Simplified English and Machine Translation: best practices for localization content optimization and simplification, by Alberto Viralhadas Ferreira

Translation mistakes always impact history

• Biblical translation from Hebrew
  • Changed “a halo of light” to “two horns of light” – leading to the idea that Jews had horns.
• JFK and Nikita Khrushchev met with transpators
  • “We will live so long we’ll someday see the US buried” translated  to “we will bury you.”
• Context always matters

International issues

• Eastern cultures tend to be more holistic
• Western cultures tend to be more analytical – they perceive elements sequentially, and read from the center to the periphery
• International markets
  • Think differently
  • Respond differently
  • Have different needs
  • Need different strategies

Controlled language for machine translation

• Cross-linguistic issues come up
  • Formal vs. Informal styles
  • Articles “the/a”
  • Verbs and active/passive voice
  • Capitalization
  • Adjective/verb ambiguity

Key things to keep in mind:

• Keep sentences straight forward: Subject + verb
• Avoid interjections and jargon
  • “Oops!” is tough to translate
• Tag everything consistently
• Take care with the logic of “and” and “or”
  • Use individual sentences instead of “and”
  • Avoid “or”
• Avoid strings of nouns
  • Use hyphens to qualify things and ensure they are logical pairs
• Use punctuation in specific ways:
  • Colons and dashes are for vertical lists
  • Hyphens join things
  • Parenthesis make cross-references to illustration and/or text
  • Never ever use semicolons
• Normalize sentence styles
  • If “For more information, consult the web page” then always that
  • If “Go to our web page to find more info” then always that

Sadly, due to end-of-day fatigue, these notes are very incomplete.