Speaking an international language
Published Date: 12 January 2009
A SHEFFIED-BASED expert on making complex documents – including software manuals – understandable by all has come up with a low cost solution for companies that are put off having an international web presence by translation costs.
Mike Unwalla, founder of TechScribe, says companies could reduce, or even eliminate, expensive human translation by using what's called "International English."
International English uses fewer words and simpler grammar than a native speaker, making it easier for foreigners with a smattering of English to understand and for computers to automatically translate.
"For business purposes, one simple word can be used as an alternative to different words that have related meanings," explains Mike Unwalla.
"For example, the word 'think' can be used as an alternative to believe, consider, deem, feel, reckon, regard, suppose, and suspect." International English goes further than that, however.
While the sentences "Set up the computer" and "Set the computer up" mean the same thing, the second would be more easily understood by a foreigner, says Mike and would be easier for a computer to translate correctly into other languages.
TechScribe has launched a new service to 'translate' websites into International English and has set up a website – International English – to show companies some of the pitfalls of using standard English and the benefits of using International English.
(Source: The Star)
My conclusion at the time was that I understand what he is trying to achieve and in some sense what he calls international English is my version of simplified English, i.e. the form that machine translation engines would "understand" and translate into a form of any foreign language that people could understand (perhaps). But then I saw a thread in Translatum (translation forum, where I hang out, about a bizarre translation on a Philips package (namely the translation of the phrase "Complete PC tune-up kit" in French as "Compléter la trousse d'air en haut de PC"). I am including here the sentence reported by Selenia; you can also visit the thread yourself by clicking here. Selenia's message is in Greek: "Από αγορά προϊόντος Philips....έχουμε ακόμη τη συσκευασία ! Ακόμα προσπαθώ να καταλάβω τη λογική του μεταφραστή ! Πρόκειται για σετ καθαρισμού, οθόνης, cd player κ.λπ" (Translation: From a Philips purchase .. we still have the packaging! I am still trying to understand the translator's logic! [The product] is a cleaning set for monitors, cd players etc).
So I thought to myself, "do you think a company like that would ever use machine translation?", and promptly proceeded to go to a machine translation engine. To my surprise, this is what Philips must have done because the sentence "Complete PC tune-up kit" is translated as "Compléter la trousse d'air en haut de PC" in the machine translation! Here is the visual:
I am still trying to understand how a big company like that would ever use machine translation but there is also the doubt on whether the agency they might have contracted did not go and use the machine translation in order not to pay the minimum fee to its translators. Would there be a way to state this sentence in "International English" so that it would give a comprehensible result from a machine translation engine? I leave the final conclusion to all of you.
