Session 2, Activity 4
Activity 4 – fine-tuning your language
This activity allows learners to engage with machine translation tools, practice critical evaluation, and gain hands-on experience refining translations for greater linguistic and cultural accuracy.
Now follow the steps below
Step 1
Read the poem Greedy Dog carefully, noting the meaning, humour, and any idiomatic expressions or phrases that might be challenging to translate literally.
Greedy Dog by James Hurley
This dog will eat anything
Apple cores and bacon fat,
Milk you poured out for the cat,
He likes the string that ties the roast
And relishes hot buttered toast.
Hide your chocolates! He’s a thief,
He’ll even eat your handkerchief.
And if you don’t like sudden shocks,
Carefully conceal your socks.
Leave some soup without a lid
And you’ll wish you never did.
When you think he must be full,
You’ll find him gobbling bits of wool,
Orange peel or paper bags,
Dusters and old cleaning rags.
This dog will eat anything,
Except for mushrooms and cucumber.
Now what is wrong with those, I wonder.
Step 2
Input the poem into your chosen OMT and translate into French, German and/or Spanish.
Step 3
Review the machine translations, noting any issues such as:
- Literal translations of idioms that don’t make sense or sound humorous.
- Awkward phrasing that doesn’t feel natural or fluid in the target language.
- Grammar issues like incorrect verb conjugations, agreement errors, or word order.
Step 4
Now refine the translation manually:
- Rewrite phrases to sound more natural or expressive in the target language.
- Adjust idiomatic expressions or cultural references to retain the humour.
- Use a dictionary or language resource to verify any unfamiliar words or structures.
Step 5
Input your refined translation into OMT for an English back translation. What do you notice? Are there differences to the original version?
Reflection
What was the biggest challenge in translating this poem?
Which phrases required the most adjustment?
How did the machine translation help, and where did it fall short?
Discussion
Online machine translation can give a good starting point for the basic structure, but it may translate phrases too literally, making some lines sound stiff.
The hardest part of translating this poem into another language may be finding a way to retain the light, humorous tone. Certain words and phrases like ‘bacon fat’ and ‘buttered toast’ may not have exact equivalents in French, German and Spanish that fit the playful tone.
OMT may have captured the main ideas but missed the playful tone.
Another challenge in translating the poem can be adjusting for idiomatic expressions and cultural differences.
The machine translation can give a basic structure, but certain (cultural) phrases could be translated too literally and sound awkward.
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