…so just try to understand what they are saying on Twitter by using automatic translation tools.

A funny blog post got me playing around with online translation again.

In “Facebook and Twitter try to translate — but we still can’t understand,” Washington Post writer Bethany Butler points out the inherent weaknesses in trying to machine translate tweets and other social media utterances.

This type of communication is full of idioms, cultural references, and abbreviations to boot – so it’s no surprise that translation features don’t cut it yet.

In her post, Butler takes machine translations of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s tweets to task:

In one Feb.15 tweet, Sarkozy wrote (we think) that he promised to break down barriers to progress in his country.

The translation, powered by Google Translate, reads: “Every time there is a blockage, I’ll cut the French people.”

Turnabout is fair play…what is Barack Obama communicating to French-speakers who run his tweets through automatic translation services?

To be honest, some messages come across fairly well. But others are pretty messy.

A catchy slogan such as “In America, we don’t give up, we get up” comes across in French, roughly, as “In America, we don’t give in place, we get up.”

And one word can change everything: in French “collège” means “middle school” or “junior high school.” So an otherwise flawless tweet translation about higher education shows the President promising to “make junior high school affordable for more Americans.”

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
  If you're trying to translate social content such as tweets, give our language translation consultants a jingle. We might be able to guide and provide some interesting solutions.