Introduction
t has always been Man's dream to mechanize the process of translation. Indeed, equipped with the modern technology of today, all we need to do for a word-for-word translation in Microsoft Word is the following: Click on a word, point to Language on the Tools menu, click Dictionary, type a word in the Lookup box and click on Translate. However, the above-mentioned feature is only available in a limited set of languages.
there are inherent problems in translating from one language to another because of different grammatical resources of the two languages.
It is evident that the technology has some way to go, but research is certainly advancing. In the 1960's, Machine Translation (MT) systems were limited to computers, which then were massive and expensive devices. These machines substituted words for equivalent words in the target language, via an electronic dictionary. Next, the machine would rearrange the words in the syntax order of the target language. Though this may work out for very simple sentences constructed with fundamental vocabulary, it will certainly incur errors when more complex sentences are being dealt with. For instance, the sentence She is reading a book is much easier to translate to another target language such as Mandarin or Japanese. After all, this sentence basically constitutes a concrete meaning, where each lexical item carries a literal meaning and nothing more. On the other hand, the sentence The old man kicked the bucket will be much more difficult, given the metaphorical essence contained in the sentence.
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the fact that there are inherent problems in translating from one language to another because of different grammatical resources of the two languages. In other words, a human translator may be armed with some grammatical knowledge of the target language, but may not be able to translate the meaning accurately from one language to another even if s/he were provided with a dictionary. Quite frequently, the nuances of meaning in the sentences get lost as a result of translation from one language to another. Thus, this study discusses the simulation of a computer by a translator who is "pre-programmed" with standard Japanese grammatical rules and structures, notwithstanding the fact that she does not possess the proficiency to deal with exceptional cases or idiomatic phrases. In addition, it discusses the problems that arise from translating English to Japanese and vice versa, often caused by the restrictions of metaphor or particles that exist in one language but not in the other.
Methodology
Five English sentences were selected and translated by the author, who has a limited knowledge of Japanese sentence construction (she has attained Level Four of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test). These sentences were translated by her with the help of a dictionary only. The author then passed on the five English sentences to two native speakers of Japanese, both of whom were teachers of a reputable Japanese school in Singapore. Both were graduates of English, and each was assigned a task: Teacher A was supposed to translate the sentence from English to Japanese, whereas Teacher B was to back-translate the sentence from Japanese to English. This was done so that the semantic change, including any addition or loss of meaning, could be observed and recorded effectively. The results and discussion section comprise two analyses for each sentence: Analysis A consists of the comparison of the two translations, whereas analysis B discusses the interesting effects of the Japanese to English back-translation.
Bearing in mind that the Japanese sentence structure is Subject Object Verb (SOV) order and that the English sentence structure is Subject Verb Object (SVO) order, one can predict that the verb will appear at the end of the sentence after translation from English to Japanese. The English equivalent of the words is indicated under the Japanese words. Both the kanji and romanized versions of the Japanese language are indicated.
Sentences which were translated from English to Japanese, then back to English.
Sentence 1
The children will eat the fish.
Sentence 2
Send the professor a letter from your new school.
Sentence 3
The fish will be eaten by the children
Sentence 4
Who is the person that is hugging the dog?
Sentence 5
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Results and Discussion
Sentence One:
The children will eat the fish.
My Translation:
Kono kodomotachi wa kono sakana o tabe deshyo.
(These) (children) (these) (fish) (eat)
Native Speaker's Translation:
Kodomotachi wa sakana o tabe masu.
(Children) (fish) (eat)
Analysis A: Comparison of the two translations
In Japanese, there is no definite article equivalent to the article the. Its best alternatives would be kono, sono, and ano. As recommended by the dictionary, these words mean these, those, and those over there respectively. In my translation, the is replaced by kono. Similarly, when performing a translation, the computer, which has limited grammatical knowledge, might first search for the meaning of the in the Japanese lexicon, and upon finding none, replace it with one of the three alternatives. By doing so, the semantic interpretation of the sentence would be drastically changed. For instance, in my translation, I have selected kono to replace the. However, the word kono means these, and the translated sentence therefore reads "These children will eat these fish."
According to my Japanese translator, adding the future morpheme deshyo, the equivalent of will, makes the sentence sound unnatural. The interesting observation is that Japanese does not have this future tense generally, unless it is used for weather forecasts. The Japanese rely purely on context to determine if will eat is to be used, or eat alone is to be used, a phenomenon that does not occur in English. The computer might make the same mistake as the ignorant human translator, i.e., trying to find its equivalent in the dictionary and then substituting it in the correct grammatical form. This results in an imperfect translation鈥攁n unnatural-sounding sentence.
Analysis B: Discussion of Back Translation from Japanese to English
Back-Translation: Children eat fish.
In the correct Japanese version, the is omitted in both "The children" and "the fish." Therefore, when the Japanese sentence is translated back into English, the sentence becomes "Children eat fish." Similarly, if the computer were to perform the task by merely omitting the and not replacing it with kono, sono, or ano, the meaning of the sentence changes again. (a) "Children eat fish" is a generic statement which means that children can eat fish, without specific reference to any particular children or fish, (b) "These children will eat these fish" means that the speaker was referring to the children and the fish that were both near the speaker, during the time of the speech. Thus, the identification of the children and the fish is definite, and the presence of the children and the fish is specified. (c) "The children will eat the fish" however, means that the speaker knows which children and fish he is referring to, but the children and the fish need not be present during the time of the speech. Thus, although the identification of the noun phrase is definite, the presence of the noun phrase is unspecified. Clearly, the original sentence (c), translated, would have the meaning of either (a) or (b) but its original meaning could not be retained. Hence, this is a problem inherent in translation itself in this particular language combination, not only in machine translation.
It is important to realize that a one-to-one correspondence in translation is indeed hard to achieve. As shown in the examples above, one either replaces the with kono, sono or ano, or one omits the completely. Either way, it is difficult to obtain a perfect translation for "The children will eat the fish." A similar problem probably arises in machine translation, where the computer might either replace the with the three alternatives or omit the completely.
Sentence Two:
Send the professor a letter from your new school.
My Translation:
Kyuju kara anata no atarashi gakko tegami o dashimasu.
(Professor) (from) (your) (new) (school) (letter) (send)
Native Speaker's Translation:
Atarashi gakko kara kyuju ni tegami o dashinasai
(New) (school) (from) (Professor) (to) (letter) (send)
Analysis A: Comparison of the two translations
In my translation, the preposition from precedes the noun phrase your new school, whereas in the correct translation by native speakers, the same preposition follows the noun phrase "new school." This translation problem arises from the fact that in English, the preposition from always precedes the noun phrase, whereas in Japanese, the preposition from (kara) always follows the noun phrase. Similarly, although the computer may be able to change all English words into Japanese words, and analyse the sentence in a default SOCV structure, it may not be able to deal with more complex problems pertaining to the position of prepositional particles before or after a noun phrase.
It is interesting to observe that once the correct translated sentence is in the imperative form, the need for the possessive pronoun your disappears. This is due to the fact that the imperative form (indicated by nasai attached to the Japanese verb for send) assumes that the new school belongs to the addressee. Thus there is no need for anatano, which means your. Howev|||The latest version of Yahoo Messenger incorporates plug ins. And one of them is itranslate plug in. You can activate it then choose from Japanese to English from the choices. Before sending what you type click translate and it will be converted before sending. I have tried it with Spanish but you can try other language too.
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