It’s Sunday… it means it’s time for “Just for Fun”. Every Sunday, we publish a posting not related to finance or investment.
Today, we are having fun with Google Translator, i.e. a free tool from Google that allows us to translate sentence or document from one language to another. It currently supports more than 50 languages.
How are we going to have fun with Google Translator? We are going to translate a sentence from English into another language. Then we’ll translate it back to English (also using Google Translator). If everything works, the result should be the same as the original sentence; at least the meaning should be unchanged. Is this going to be the case?
Let’s try with Albert Einstein’s popular quote:
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
English – German – English
If we translate this to Germany, we’ll get the following:
Wenn meine Relativitätstheorie bewährt, Deutschland wird mich als Deutscher Anspruch, und Frankreich wird erklären, dass ich ein Bürger der Welt bin. Sollte meine Theorie zu beweisen unwahr, wird Frankreich sagen, dass ich ein Deutscher bin, und Deutschland wird erklären, dass ich Jude bin.
Now, we translate the quote back to English, and we’ll get:
If proven my theory of relativity, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
The result is pretty good. Although the grammar is not perfect, but the meaning is pretty much the same.
English – Chinese – English
Now, let’s try with Chinese:
如果我的相对论被证明是成功的，德国将要求我作为德国，法国将宣布，我是世界公民。如果我的理论证明不真实的，法国会说我是德国，德国将宣布，我是犹太人。
When we translate it back to English, the result is getting more interesting:
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will ask me as Germany, France announced that I was citizen of the world. If my theory prove untrue, France will say I was in Germany, Germany will declare that I was Jewish.
The sentence becomes pretty funny, but we might still be able to guess the original sentence.
English – Indonesian – English
Last one, we try with Indonesian.
Jika teori relativitas saya terbukti berhasil, Jerman akan mengklaim saya sebagai seorang Jerman, dan Perancis akan menyatakan bahwa saya adalah seorang warga dunia. Jika teori saya terbukti benar, Prancis akan mengatakan bahwa saya seorang Jerman, dan Jerman akan menyatakan bahwa saya seorang Yahudi.
If we translate it back to English, the result doesn’t look correct. Notice that “correct” is supposed to be “untrue”; the meaning is just the opposite.
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. If my theory proves correct, the French would say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
