Machine Translation Humor Update

It has been sometime since I first wrote a blog post about MT humor primarily because I really have not been able to find anything worth the mention, until now, and except for some really lame examples about how MT mistranslates (sic) I have not seen much to laugh heartily at. It seems a group of people on the web have discovered the humorous possibilities of MT in translating song lyrics which might be difficult even for good human translators. (It really seems strange to be saying “human translator”.) 

I should point out that in all these recent cases one does have to work at degrading the translation quality by running the same text through a whole sequence of preferably not closely related languages.

It has often surprised me that there are some in the MT industry who use “back translation” as a way to check MT quality, as from my vantage point it is an exercise that can only result in proving the obvious. MT back translation by definition should result in deterioration since to a very great extent MT will almost always be something less than a perfect translation. This point seems to evade many who advocate this method of evaluation, so let me clarify with some mathematics as math is one of the few conceptual frameworks available to man where proof is absolute or pretty damned certain at least.

If one has a perfect MT system then the Source and Target segments should be very close if not exactly the same. So mathematically we could state this as:

Source (1) x Target (1) = 1

since in this case we know our MT system is perfect ;-)

But in real life where humans play on the internet and you have DIY MT systems being used to determine what MT can produce, the results are less likely to equal 1 which is perfect as shown in the example above.

So lets say you and I do a somewhat serious evaluation of the output of various MT systems (each language direction should be considered a separate system) and find that the following table is true for our samples by running 5,000 sentences through various MT conversions and scoring each MT translation (conversion) as a percentage “correct” in terms of linguistic accuracy and precision.

Language Combination	Percentage Correct
English to Spanish	0.8 or 80%
Spanish to English	0.85 or 85%
English to German	0.7 or 70%
German to English	0.75 or 75%

So if we took 1,000 new sentences and translate them with MT we should expect that the percentage shown above would be “correct” (whatever that means). But if we now chain the results by making the output of one, the input of the other, we will find that results are different and and get continually smaller e.g.

EN > ES > EN = .8 x .85 = 0.68 or 68% correct

EN > DE > EN = .7 x .75 =  0.525 or 52.5% correct

So with MT we should expect that every back test will result in a lower or degraded results as we are multiplying the effect of two different systems. Since computers don’t really speak the language one cannot assume that they have equal knowledge going each way and if you provide a bad source from system A to system B you should expect a bad target as computers like some people, are very literal.

So now if we take our example and run it through multiple iterations we should see a very definite degradation of the output as we can see below.

EN > ES > EN(from MT) > DE > EN = .8 x .85 x .7 x .75 = 0.357 or 35.7%

So if you are trying to make MT look silly you have to run it through multiple iterations to get silly results. It would help further if you chose language combinations like EN to Japanese to Hindi to Arabic as this would cause more rapid degradation to the original English source. Try it and share your results in the comments. 

So here we have a very nicely done example and you should realize it takes great skill for the lead vocalist to mouth the MT words as if they were real lyrics and still maintain melodic and rhythmic integrity so be generous in your appreciation of their efforts.

This video shows very effectively how using multiple languages very quickly can degrade the original source as you can see when they go to 64 languages. Somehow words get lost and really strange.

And here is one from a vlogger who really enjoys the effect of multiple rounds of MT on a songs lyrics. She is a good singer and is able to maintain the basic melody without breaking into a smile so I found it quite enjoyable  and I would not be surprised that some might believe that these were indeed the lyrics of the song. She has a whole collection of recordings and has what I consider are high production values for this kind of stuff.

And she produces wonderful results on this Disney classic "When you paint the colors of your air can" which used to be a favorite of my daughter. I actually think the song from the Little Mermaid is much funnier and was done by just running it only through four iterations in Google Translate, but since I could not embed it here directly I have given the link.

 Here is another person who has decided that 14 iterations is enough to get to generally funny with this or any pop song. I'm not sure how funny this really is since I don't know the original song.

 So it appears that we are going to see a whole class of songs that are re-interpreted by Google Translate and it is possible to get millions of views as MKR has, and probably even make a living doing this.  So here you see one more job created by MT.

So anyway if somebody suggests doing a back test with MT you should know the cards are clearly stacked against the MT monster and the results are pretty close to meaningless. A human assessment of a targeted sample set of sentences is a much better way to understand your MT engine.

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving vacation and are not feeling compelled to shop too fervently now. 

In this time of strife and distrust in Ferguson it is good to see spontaneous goodwill and instant musical camaraderie between these amateur musicians. 

 



My previous posts on MT humor for those who care are:

Machine and Human Translation Based Humor

Translation Humor & Mocking Machine Translation

Translation Humor & Mocking Machine Translation

I often run into blogs by translators and LSPs or just regular people who suggest that machine translation is not quite ready. In fact some people actually, believe it or not, mock MT. So while I do believe that MT is going be very much a part of the translation landscape in the very near future, I thought it would be fun to pick some of my favorite examples of MT gone awry. 

While MT mishaps can be funny I still think that humans, especially silly humans can do better, and my first example is by Ben who translated this Bollywood song and just put down what he thought he heard. I speak the language (Hindi) she is singing in and I laughed till I cried. In fact I can’t stop smiling as I type this. For those who want to know, “meheboob mereh” actually means my beloved.  

These are Ben’s own words on what he was trying to do:
My translation of an Indian music video. This is what I think the words sound like. www.bugben.com

Translation Party is a popular site that uses a familiar technique used to make MT look bad. You keep translating the same phrase back and forth and perhaps even across various languages to make sure that you make MT output that is really bad. Interestingly there are some “MT consultants” who also use this technique to test MT technology. A pointless exercise if you are serious, but can be great fun if you are just playing. So in my test,  <practice makes perfect and there is no substitute for hard work> was translated as <after working really hard Substitute>. Interestingly it was 100% accurate on <please do not poop on my knee> and gave me the same phrase back. I think that shows that when it really matters it can get things right.

Another personal favorite of mine is from Jill Sommer who had this little gem on her blog. Here is a tiny movie with a dialog developed completely from MT round tripping. As she describes it:

This fine little film by Matt Sloan capitalizes on Babelfish for its dialog. It translates to and from English, French and German. It was filmed on location in Trouville, France. Enjoy!

Mark Liberman in his Language Log blog shows this little furry iPod docking station gadget and with the following description which is suspected to be machine translation:

iMini is built in the rhythm decoding chip MJ1191 of the programming embedded system, and to integrate the HIPS skeleton; No matter you play any kind of music, MJ1191 always make your pet in dancing for you at once.

Another site that is always good for a laugh is Engrish.com. These are examples of mostly Chinese and Japanese attempts at translation into English. And this restaurant sign is one I often use in my presentations to show what MT is without human translator involvement. If you have not ever looked at the site, it is quite funny http://engrish.com/ . Here is one that is fun. I am told that there is a site in Japan with funny Japanese phrases from foreigners and I am sure the Chinese are laughing at us too. Just take a look at some of the strange Chinese character tattoos.

Here is a blog that specializes in finding strange translation examples from across the world. http://www.lostintranslationbook.com/. Here are some examples we collected from around the world and put on our website (in the left column).  

Anyway while I do laugh at these examples, I do believe the technology is improving all the time and as they say, he who laughs last, laughs the loudest. 

Let me know if you find other fun stuff and if I like it I will add it to this entry or create another entry with the best examples that people find.  Let's focus on really funny and not just wrong, since that would be like laughing at Sarah Palin.



P.S. The Huffington Post found some funny subtitles: Lost In Translation: When Subtitles Go Wrong

I also found another site of mostly human translation gaffes but I thought I would continue to add the best links I find over time to this entry.

 

Thanks to The Full Blog

And a few more from the Globalization Group and here is an explanation on why the translation industry is "hella lame".

And of course Monty Python with their Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook.

And for those of you who don't speak hip-hop, here is an excellent translation of the song My Hump.

This is a late insertion and shows you how human beings are always  SOOOOO much funnier than anything that MT could dream up. 60 Unintentionally Offensive Business and Product Names - Anybody want to buy some Asshoe shoes, or try some of that tasty Fart juice that goes really well with JussiPussi rolls and Shitto sauce?