FROM THE ARCHIVES... "The whisky was invisible", or Persistent Myths of MT [Machine Translation]
John Hutchins
Scarcely a month goes by without somebody repeating the story of the MT system which translated the Biblical saying "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into Russian, which was then translated back as "The whisky is strong, but the meat is rotten". If this is not quite as you remember it then that is understandable. Perhaps you heard that the back translation was "The vodka is strong but the steak is lousy". Or maybe you heard that the language was not Russian, but German... or Japanese... or Chinese...
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It may be difficult for the MT community to combat such stories since they have undoubted humour and memorableness, and since they are sometimes believed even by those involved in the field. However, there are surely more than enough true MT 'howlers' which could be cited - such as the translation of les enfants et les femmes enceintes as pregnant children and women - without the need to resort to those which are known to be apocryphal.
Référence bibliographique : Hutchins J. From the Archives...: « The whisky was invisible », or Persistent Myths of MT. MT News International [Internet]. 1995 [cité 20 nov 2023];11. Disponible sur: https://mt-archive.net/MTNI-11.pdf
voir la rubrique FROM THE ARCHIVES, pp. 32-34 de la version numérisée en PDF
Reproduction numérique de l'article isolé (texte intégral) : Hutchins J. « The whisky was invisible », or Persistent Myths of MT. MT News International [Internet]. 1995 [cité 20 nov 2023]; Disponible sur: https://aclanthology.org/www.mt-archive.info/90/MTNI-1995-Hutchins.pdf
Connexe
Article cité dans l'ouvrage : Léon J. Histoire de l’automatisation des sciences du langage. Lyon: ENS éditions; 2015. (Langages), en note p. 26 de l'édition physique & ici en version numérique :
On rapporte souvent, pour railler la faiblesse des systèmes de TA, la traduction de l’anglais vers le russe de la citation de la Bible : « The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak » (« l’esprit est fort mais la chair est faible ») qui de nouveau traduite du russe en anglais donne « The whisky is strong, but the meat is rotten » ou « The ghost is a volunteer but the meat is tender ». En fait il s’agirait d’une erreur de traduction humaine, rapportée par un journaliste (en 1956) et imputée à la machine (voir Hutchins 1995 pour les détails).