Machine translation can bring blunders, successes in international business

In 2008, a Chinese restaurant displayed a bilingual sign above its storefront to accommodate English-speaking patrons. To save a few pennies in creating the sign, someone working for the restaurant skipped use of a professional human translation. Instead, the restaurateur typed the restaurant name into a machine translation program, which quickly returned some English text that was printed and placed above the business storefront without review. Unfortunately, the translation utility was not working that day. Because of the misfortune, Internet users worldwide have seen photos of the restaurant sign displaying the supposed English translation, Translate server error.

Public interest in machine translation is growing as the nature of business becomes increasingly international, translation technology continues to improve and Google makes news each time it adds machine translation features to another of its online applications. With increased interest comes increased optimism. However, it is important to question whether this optimism is based on reality or hype.

Consumers' optimism about machine translation often cools when they notice glaring errors in machine-translated communications. Some of these anecdotes are rather humorous, like the incident involving the Chinese restaurant sign.

Earlier this year, the online periodical Kazakhstan Today was unable to convey its intended meaning through a machine-translated English article without producing a few chuckles. The article discussed how Kazakhstan's former president felt the country was not passing gas the way it should. While intending to report national news on energy, this short, two-paragraph article made four separate references to the important issue of "passing gas." Months later, the periodical altered the translation and removed the offending phrase.

In another instance, Israeli journalists nearly set off an international incident when they sent a list of machine-translated questions to a Dutch diplomat. The mistranslated message started with the greeting, "Helloh (sic) bud," and went downhill from there. At one point it appeared to insult the diplomat's mother.

Is machine translation worthless? No. Automatic translation is neither completely worthless nor perfect. However, in very specific business situations, machine translation can be quite useful and beneficial.