COMP30421 Natural Language Engineering Practical 5

COMP30421 Natural Language Engineering
Practical 5 - Machine Translation
Due Weds 5/12/07
M ary M c Gee W ood
[email protected]
Go to BabelFish: http://babelfish.com/ (or, if you prefer, one of the other on-line
translators listed at
http://dir.yahoo.com/Social Science/Linguistics and Human Languages/
Translation and Interpretation/Online Translators/
Translate your text into any language you like - if possible, one you understand at least a
little - and translate that output back into English. (You may have to do this in chunks
of no more than 150 words each.) Compare the result with the original English. Try to
figure out how the mistakes have come about. (You will find it helpful to look at the
foreign language version.)
Scribbling on a print-out, as you did for the first three exercises, is fine. As well as pointby-point comments, please give an overall opinion on how good or useful (or not) the
results are.
Here is an example from my text: this is actually not too bad, most of the errors involve
single words rather than grammatical structures, and the general idea comes through.
The long, bushy tail which the cat wraps around himself when he curls up to
sleep can protect him from cold winters. His ears are more heavily furred (both
inside and on the tips) than many breeds for protection from the cold, and have
a large range of movement. Big, round, tufted feet serve as ’snow shoes.’
La longue, touffue queue que le chat enroule autour de se quand il se courbe
jusqu’au sommeil peut le protger contre des hivers froids. Ses oreilles sont furred
plus fortement ( l’intrieur et sur les bouts) que beaucoup de races pour la protection contre le froid, et ont une mobilit tendue. Les grands, ronds, tufts pieds
servent de ’chaussures de neige.’
The long one, touffue tail which the cat rolls up around when it is curved until
the sleep can protect it from cold winters. Its ears are more strongly furred
(inside and on the ends) that many races for protection against the cold, and
have a wide mobility. The large, round, tufts feet serve as ’ shoes of snow.’
But see also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2206335,00.html
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