Machine translation of the 'The Liar'

Name:  Nargis I. Saiyad

Paper: Translation Studies

Topic: Machine Translation

Class: M.A.II, Sem.: I

Year: 2012/13

Submitted To,

Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept. of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Bhavnagar.

Machine translation of the 'The Liar'

v Introduction :-

        Machine translation in the abbreviation is written as MT.  It uses the software to translate.  Sometimes it creates major issues like disambiguation. 

        That's why the evaluation of machine is not so authentic than human-evaluation.

v Short Stories :-

        The book 'Contemporary Indian Short Stories in English' Compiled by Shiv K.kumar is translate in Gujarati also but when we translate it with the help of machine, it gives totally different meaning.  Sometimes, it doesn't create any meaning at all.

        I have taken one short story 'The Liar' by Mulk Raj Anand for machine translation.  It is like this,

v 'The Liar':-

        When I first typed the title 'The Liar' the Gujarati word came out was ' the liar '.  The Real meaning in Gujarati for it is ' juththo' 'khota bolo'.

       

        The first line of English was,

        'Labhu, the old Shikari of my village, was a born lair.

And the Gujarati translation of it was,

'Labhu, mara gam na juna shikari, janm liar'

        

        This makes no sense.  A person who doesn't know Gujarati, if he will speak this line, it may create humour.

       

        So, me, times, the words like 'Therefore', 'And', 'tree', 'he' remained same in Gujarati and even in the same spellings.

        ' He was tolerated even to the extent of being given a seat at the foot of the banyan tree.'

        The Gujarati was totally different from the actual meaning.  The Gujarati of it was,

           'He, sahan karvama avyu hatu pan karvama vaniyo tree'

        We can see here the Gujarati was 'He', 'vaniyo tree' !! The real meaning is destroyed here.  If we do the translation without the help of Google translation or other site, the Gujarati we can say,

        ' Tene etlu sahan karavvama avyu ke tene vad na zad niche bethvu padtu.'

       

        The Gujarati translation by machine is very strange.  Machine shows totally different meaning.

        The word 'English' was in Gujarati as 'inglish' when the word was 'English Subedar', it was in Gujarati as 'Guajarati subedar'.

        And when I typed the line,

       

        "Labhu," I would say, " I am sure it is impossible to track any prey when you are half up the side of a hillock.

        The machine used two words in the end 'chhe' and also 'chhu'.  It Creates humour.

        In one dialogue, 'fool' is, 'ful', Labhu, is 'Labhu', 'Liar, 'everybody' is 'Everybody'  and there is no Gujarati word for 'silly'.   And this dialogue is like this,

        "oh, you are a fool, Labhu," I said. "And you are a liar.  Everybody says so.  And I don't believe you at all.  My mother says I am silly to believe your tales''.

        The Gujarati of it is,

        ''me kahyu oh,  tame ek ful, Labhu chhe.'' ''ane tame liar chhe. everybody tethi kahe chhe, ane hu tamne badhi manta nathi. mari mata kahe chhe hu tamari vartao mane koi chhu.''

       

        We can see here machine translation makes much difference in the meaning of real words.

        In some translations, ''All right'' is translation is ''All right'', ''chagrined'' is translation is also the same.

        In the English word 'either' and the Gujarati of it is 'kya' so, in line, it doesn't create any meaning and that line is,

        '' All right'', I said, chagrined and stubborn.  '' I don't want to speak to you either''.

        The machine doesn't give correct translation of long sentence.  At that time, we find word to word translation only.  It doesn't create any meaning.   Even word to word translation doesn't give any type of meaning. The best example from 'The Liar' is this,

              ''I waited eagerly for Labhu's return to confirm from his very much these stories of his incompetence, because, though incredulous of this scandal, I had been driven to a frenzy of chagrin by his insulting dismissal of me''.

                              Even the Gujarati speaker will not understand that what these words want to suggest.

v Conclusion :-

       

                         By this example, we can say that after all machines are machines.  It can not understand the hidden meaning, sometime it creates amusement.   So, machine translation is not authentic.  It has advantages as well as disadvantages, too.