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The Govern takes down English version of its site due to errors produced by machine translation (source in Spanish)

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Jesús Garcia
Jesús Garcia
Mexico
Local time: 10:24
English to Spanish
+ ...
Notice May 5, 2012

I can´t believe that the page, the main page of a government has such mistakes inside. Well to be sincere, some pages of my country have huge mistakes, but above all in the content of the pages lack of interest.
 
Helena Chavarria
Helena Chavarria  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 18:24
Member (2011)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Ha ha! May 5, 2012

My husband told me about it this afternoon. It's been nice to laugh for a change!
 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 18:24
Spanish to English
+ ...
Pobody's nerfect May 7, 2012

hera2010 wrote:

I can´t believe that the page, the main page of a government has such mistakes inside. Well to be sincere, some pages of my country have huge mistakes, but above all in the content of the pages lack of interest.


I once translated a website for the Valencian Government in Spain and when I notified them that they'd added a mistake when uploading it ("Intentional" University instead of "International"), they said they couldn't do anything about it as it was "the official web page" and it was too late to remedy the error.
I also sometimes have to research and translate Mexican vocabulary and many official sites appear to be machine-translated. The other day I saw "cola de página" (page trailer or footer) translated as "remolque", which had me scratching my head for a good while...
 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 18:24
Member
English to French
Back to square one May 8, 2012

Money wasted for nothing.

This kind of failure can happen for a number of reasons:
-Even high profile bodies are not able to find skilled professionals to give them sound advice
-No budget for versions in other languages
-Translation is an activity like paper-clip unbending: anybody can do it and there is no need for any specialist advice

The more stories like this get published and relayed, the more they raise awareness among the people in charge that trans... See more
Money wasted for nothing.

This kind of failure can happen for a number of reasons:
-Even high profile bodies are not able to find skilled professionals to give them sound advice
-No budget for versions in other languages
-Translation is an activity like paper-clip unbending: anybody can do it and there is no need for any specialist advice

The more stories like this get published and relayed, the more they raise awareness among the people in charge that translation should not be left in the hands of the secretary's son-in-law's uncle/aunt or any other smart employee who thinks they found a way to cut costs.

Reaching foreign audiences is expensive, and so is translation to make sure that the initiative is successful. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Philippe ▲ Collapse
 
Mark Cole
Mark Cole  Identity Verified
Local time: 17:24
Polish to English
+ ...
Welcome to austerity Europe! May 8, 2012

As more and more governments look at ways to cut costs, translation is an easy target: as you may have read recently, the National Health Service in the UK was considering using Google Translate to "save" money on interpreting costs for GPs...
 


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The Govern takes down English version of its site due to errors produced by machine translation (source in Spanish)







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