INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC

TRANSLATION ERROR USING GOOGLE TRANSLATE

Name: Naurah Nabilah Sya'bani Padmasehana

Abstract

During the last decades, Google Translate, as a statistical machine translation (SMT), was in the center of attention for supporting 90 languages. Although there are many studies on Google Translate, few researches have considered other language – English translation pairs. This study used Keshavarz’s (1999) model of error analysis to carry put a comparison study between the raw English – Persian translations and Persian – English translation from Google Translate. Based on the criteria presented in the model, 100 systematically selected sentences from an interpreter app called Motarjem Hamrah were translated Google Translate and then evaluated and brought in different tables. Result of analyzing and tabulating the frequencies of the errors together with conducting a chi-square test showed no significant differences between the qualities of Google Translate from other language to English and English to other language. In addition, lexicosemantic and active/passive voice errors were the most and least frequent errors, respectively. Directions for future research are recognized in the paper for the improvements of the system.

KEYWORDS: Error Translation, Google Translation, Machine Translate

Introduction

The use of Google Translate has been increasing either in the academic discipline or in the non – academic discipline. Despite the fast – turnaround time produced by Machine Translation has been considered such as Google Translate, the quality of the translation has been considered far from perfection. Thus in order to evaluate the quality of machine translation, error analysis has been suggested to be conducted. In line with this, numerous text genres have been investigated, including one of which is an abstract text. Abstracts as a summary of a research paper harbors important information where it serve to attract readers to whether read the entire passage or leave it.

 In Indonesia, the need to translate abstracts of undergraduate thesis into English is a requirement for students to complete their final year academic papers. Some universities oblige students to have the abstract of their scientific translated by official institutional language center, but, some others do not require official translation service to translate their abstract into English. As a result, students are allowed to use whatever means available to translate their abstract as fast as possible without taking into account the accuracy of the translated text. The last resort students would take is using Google Translate to translate their abstract since the service it provides is free and real – time basis results within seconds.  However, the majority of students have been unaware of the consequences it bears upon it such as wrong world choices, wrong prepositions, wrong word order and so on. They have been known to have used Google Translate to translate their abstracts of bachelor’s papers into English. This phenomenon is found in the Methodist University of Indonesia, Medan. The university administrator does not require final year student to translate their bachelor’s papers’ abstracts accurately using the service of professional translator.

International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research

Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 15-23, April 2017

Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org)

Background of Study

Nowadays, English is considered as international language due to the impact of globalization. In the process of understanding English, translation is needed. According to Catford (1965:20), translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL). Its uses can be found in the translation of textbook, state documents, literary works, bilingual books, business documents, journals or scientific works and so forth. Hence, because of its vital role, translation can offer a solution to overcome language gap in communication.

Indonesian people often use internet in their daily life. One of the tools on the internet that can help them in translation process is Google Translate service. Google Translate is a convenient tool that offers free instant translation service on the web. It can be utilized to translate words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and even a web page between any pairs of supported languages. Moreover it can be utilized to minimized time and effort to do translation tasks because the translation results are instantly generated. The translation is also helped with the easiness and availability of Google Translate. Which are online and accessible to anyone and anytime for free with internet connection.

Meanwhile, the use of Google Translate to translate has brought some issues. Some translators might use Google Translate blatantly without any revising effort on its translation, which leads to some overwhelming translation results. Google Translate itself also has limitation, that when translating complex sentences, it would sometimes resulted in inaccurate translation. There is an opinion that using Google Translate to do the translation work is too narrow – minded and easy because anyone can copy the text to Google Translate, choose the language and press the translate button. Even, anyone who does not have any proficiency in both source and target language is able to do it. Despite of those issues, the use of Google Translate to do the translation work is indeed fast and can bring an instant overview of translation result.

From those issues, there comes an idea of analyzing the errors in translation result of certain type of text by using Google Translate. One type of the text, which is very familiar in daily life, is News Item text. News Item texts can be found in newspaper, magazines, blogs, news, websites and so forth. Utilizing Google Translate to translate News Item texts is also popular due to the need of fast information updates in the society in a form of translating foreign news into local language that can be understood by local people and vice versa. Thus, this research was employed to find and explain errors in Google Translate’s translation results of News Item texts from Indonesia to English.

Research Finding

Translation

Translating is the written transfer activity text messages from one language texts (Hoed; 2006: 5). In this case, the translated text is called the source text and a language called the source language. With regard to the translation, the text drafted by the translator is called the target text and the language is called the target language. Nida and Taber (1994:34) stated “translation is the reproducing message in the source language with natural equivalence in the target language, play through two steps, first, based on the meaning and second based on style”. In other words, the translation is to reproduce the message in the source language with their natural equivalents in the target language, in two steps, first, based on the meanings and the second based on the style (the language) it.

Based on some of the above definitions of translation, translation is a section on the relationship between two or more languages that then either transfers the meaning of the source language (SL) into target language (TL).

Types of Translation

Translation can be classified into several types. According to Lado (1968; 261 – 262) translation is not only used for formal purposes, but the translation is also used for informal purposes. Therefore, the translation may occur in two areas, namely in the realm of factual formal translation in literature (literary) in the realm of informal translation.

Larson (1928: 35) stated that translations into shapes (form – based information) and translation of the meaning – based translation). Examples of forms – based translation are a literal translation, while translating idiomatic translation is an example of the meaning – based translation. Literal translation is the translation of the word per word (word to word translation). This translation is usually used in linguistic translation. In idiomatic translation (idiomatic translation), the translator tries to divert the meaning of sources language into target language so that can be understood easily and naturally. Therefore, the emphasis on the idiomatic translation of the meaning or message is not on words or other lexical items.

Moreover, Newmark (1988: 45 – 47) classifies translation into eight kinds, namely:

1.      Word for Word Translation

In translating word for word translation, the wording (word – order) sources languages is maintained and words in sources language translated one by one in accordance with the general meaning and not taking account of the text.

2.      Literal Translation

In this translation, grammatical constructions source (source language) was transferred into the target language grammatical constructions (target language) closest, but the words translated lexical still single, out of context.

3.      Faithful Translation

In this type of translation, contextual meaning diverted from source language into target language, despite the limitations of target language grammatical structure. Words cultures are transferred and the degree of “abnormality” grammatical and lexical persists.

4.      Semantic Translation

This translation is promoting the values the beauty of sources language. Translating this model more flexible by providing a space for creativity and intuition interpreter.

5.      Adaptation Translation

This type of translation is a form of translation ‘most free’, commonly used in drama and poetry.

6.      Free Translation

In this type of translation, the message and mandate reproduced, regardless of the form in the source language. In other words, in this kind of translation, ‘content’ is translated without following the ‘shape’ as in source language.

7.      Idiomatic Translation

In translation this type of message or mandate reproduced in target language but there is a tendency to distortion shades of meaning, due to the use of idiom that was not there at source language.

8.      Communicative Translation

In this type of translation, contextual meaning source language can be received and understood by the target audience of the translation.

Machine Translation

Machine translation is a blend of linguistics with computational science, often referred to as part of the science of computational linguistics. The point of this science tries to make the machine capable of translating one language into another. Besides proving that the translation is no longer solely a translation by humans, but in a professional context, an improvement of process and products that combine the power of computer and the analysis of language – based computers with the human ability to analyze the meaning and determine an appropriate form into other languages.

Google Translate is one of several machine translations most commonly used by people around the world to translate text over 90 different languages. Google Translate searches different documentaries to find the best appropriate translation pattern between translated texts by human. This pattern searching is called Statistical Machine Translation. Since the number of translated texts varies from users to users, consequently, the quality of Google Translate depends on the number of human translated texts searched by Google Translate (Karami, 2014). Quite recently, another assessment to the study of Google Translate does not handle subject – verb agreement very well while translating English sentences into another language compare to human translation.

Error Analysis

Error analysis (EA), a fundamental branch of applied linguistics, emerged in the sixties to address students’ performance (Shrestha, 1979). According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics (2010), (EA) is manifested in order to (1) describe strategies used by the learners in language teaching, (2) spot causes of errors and finally (3) gain information on common difficulties in language learning to develop  materials and strategies to help the learners avoid their errors.

Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners make. It consists of a comparison between the errors made in the Target Language (TL) and that TL itself (Corder, 1974). According to Richards et al. (1992: 96), “error analysis may be carried out in order to: a) find out how well someone knows the language, b) find out how a person learns language and c) obtain information on common difficulties in language learning”. Moreover, error analysis helps to identifying the weaknesses, with a variety of techniques, for identifying, classifying and systematically interpreting the language learners’ errors (Khodabandeh, 2007).

In terms of errors made by student of English, errors appear when the learner’s knowledge of the rules of the target language is incomplete. Errors is considered to be systematic, governed by the rule and also regarded as rule – governed when they follow the rules of the learner’s inter language (Keshavarz, 2011). According to Abbasi and Karimnia (2011) it is essential that teachers be able to adjust their teaching plan to make their teaching work more effectively by identifying learners’ errors. Moreover, recognizing errors can provide valuable information for teachers about how much the learners has learned and what kind of problems s/he has in the study of language. As Conde (2011) puts it, “error detection has been the traditional basis for translation evaluation”. Gass and Selinker (1994) identified six steps followed in conducting an error analysis. These included ‘collecting data’, ‘identifying errors’, ‘classifying errors’, ’quantifying errors’, ‘analyzing sources of error’ and ‘remediating for errors’.

Error in Translation

According to Kohler (1979: 216), based on the concept of equivalence between source text and target text, a translation error is regarded as some kind of non – equivalence between source text and target text or non – adequacy of the target text. In functionalistic approach and approaches based on the ‘skopos theory’, an error is defined as relative to the fulfillment of the target text function and the receiver’s expectations (Schmitt 1998:394; Nord 2009; 190).

Conclusion

Using Google Translate or any kind of Machine Translator is not right an answer to translate for translating foreign language. Google Translate is only use to a pre – translation that still needs to be revised in linguistic aspects so it will not cause mistranslation in the future for someone who needs to translate foreign language fast.

References

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