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Subject:Re: Number/Figure & Bringing up DOS From:eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 17 May 2002 14:55:06 -0400
>>What you say makes sense, but one of the tests used for machine
>>translations is how well the round trip is made.
Really? And how does that test the accuracy of a translation? If you don't have
an understanding of the target language how can the garbled round-trip tell you
anything about the translation process?
If translating A>B then B>A without knowing B you have no clue if:
If it was the first case, you'll dismiss a perfectly good translation because
the round-trip didn't work.
I've seen plenty of English to French Babelfish that was passable but unreadable
if round-tripped back to English.
Same for French to English to French.
But then there's another erroneous assumption being made. There's no such thing
as a good machine translation. The more probable machine translation is
independent A>B or B>A being barely passable at best and a round-trip garbling
the meaning.
The only test of effective translation is a human who knows the target language
(and rarely is a non-native speaker effective) who understands the original text
in the original language.
The case of English-toFrench-to-English by a human translator that started this
thread shows how meaning can be garbled and that case the first translation from
English to French is correct.
Eric L. Dunn
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