In a number of posts (see below) I've suggested that rather than use cheap, crap human translators customers should consider free, often-not-so-crap machine translation, so it was only a matter of time before someone called my bluff.
Tom has sent over a lovely piece from Ara re the use by the Catalan regional government of Google Translate to provide the English and Spanish versions of Govern.cat, which, aka President.cat, and in conjunction with a considerable international PR campaign, appears to be designed to pave the way to full independence, or at least create that impression for nationalists open to more radical political options.
The link to the English version has this very moment disappeared from the site, but Ara has a fine collection of pearls (e.g. "Joseph and Mary Pilgrim" for "Josep Maria Pelegrí"), and I loved the vaguely Rhodesian bit here about "raise our taxes, own a farm and have been able to modify the laws in Parliament."
So... Do we only care about the economic stats, or do words, well-considered and -translated, have some residual worth? Should the state economise on translation for non-voters and play to the gallery by for example reducing motoring costs? What is the implication of also using MT to provide a version of the site in Barcelona's lingua franca, Spanish? Would Merkel finance a farm for every Catalan?
I haven't got the answers.
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Labels: Generalitat de Catalunya