The Barbaric Goddess Or Finer Points In Translation.

[Since there's a maximum of 2500 characters, only an except is given. For those interested in the essay I wrote, please refer to http://jeffinous.blogspot.com/2010/10/barbaric-goddess-or-finer-points-in.html]

Mechanical translators exist on the Internet to help in translations, but they are only good for certain narrow categories such as business, technical and law where terms are precise and have unambiguous meanings that the industry has agreed on. Even then human polishing is needed for clean ups. Although this essay is on translating Chinese to English, its principles apply to translation between any two languages. To any modern Chinese reader ‘手提’ is short for ‘手提電話' (actually to some people '手提' is short for mobile computers or laptops, rather than mobile phones. The correct and most commonly used abbreviation for '手提電話' is actually '手機') meaning cell or mobile phone. Mechanical translators are unable to take into this into account. It is incorrect to translate it as ‘cell phone’ for a piece that was written before the invention of portable phones. The phrase can also mean ‘to carry’, ‘to wield’, ‘handheld’ or ‘portable’ depending on different nouns that come after those 2 characters, ‘手提算機' （'手提計算機', but again this could also mean laptop computers, as the formal term for computers is '計算機'）is a handheld calculator, ‘手提利劍' means ‘to wield a sharp sword’ while ‘手提花籃' becomes ‘ (someone) carrying a flower basket’. Such mechanical translators become utterly useless when used on literary works that I shall be discussing mostly in this article. Until such a day when there is enough computer memory to store and process at faster speeds contextual experiences like the human brain, a human translator’s job stays most secure!