Dan’s recent posts on his adventures with Google have shamed me into a confession of my own: I’ve become fascinated by Google Translate, which allows you to paste in a chunk of text, select your languages, and so produce a strange literary chimera, half fish, half fowl. Here’s what it does to a few sentences from the Cronaca di Simone Filipepi , an early 16th Century history of Florence under the rule of Savonarola written by Botticelli’s brother. I pasted in Filipepi’s account of the terrible storm that shook Florence and damaged the roof of the Duomo, leading many in the city to fear that the Last Judgment was upon them:
L’anno 1492 cadde di notte una saetta dal cielo et percosse la cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore, chiesa cattedrale di Fiorenza, spezzando de molti marmi, et con tanto strepito, che fece quasi tremare tutta la citt? .
In the hands of Google Translate, that sentence becomes:
The year 1492 fell by night a saetta from the sky and the beatings cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral church of Fiorenza, breaking de many marbles, and so strepito, who made almost tremble throughout the city.
Is miracolo, no? Molto poetica, con de kissing of de fingers come de waiter in un film comico! But then, could we really expect more? Any language is itself a chimera — half system, half intuition ??? and reading in another language is more like navigating by the stars than simply following a map. The lights you steer by seem to drift across the sky as you make your way through shifting contexts, idioms, and cultural conventions. I suspect it would take a computer of massive power, like the artificial intelligence programs that can now routinely beat grandmasters at chess, to produce translations that really make sense. And even then I’d have my doubts, because language is a game in which we keep changing the rules.
Want to see how hard that game really is? Here’s an exercise taken straight out of the Elizabethan schoolhouse and Roger Ascham’s influential book of educational theory The Scholemaster (1570): take a passage in English, translate it into another language, let it sit for several weeks, then translate it back into English. The closer you get to the original version, the more perfect your translations. It’s a real challenge, especially if you don’t choose a text that’s already familiar to you, which would fall back into place simply by the echo in your mind. (Some years ago in grad school I sat down with a feeling of abject terror to translate a passage designed to test my reading ability in Greek, only to find that the first words were “In the beginning“”) This exercise is called “double translation,” and it still offers one of the best ways to see how much can get lost in the echoing chasm between two languages.
So let’s put Google to the test. Here’s a famous poem by W.B. Yeats, which is itself about monstrous returns:
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
If I paste this into Google Translate and gently suggest that it might be fun to see it in Finnish, this is what we get:
Siirryn ja k????ntyv??t yh?? kasvavan gyre
The falcon ei voi kuulla Falconer;
Asiat hajoamispisteess??; keskell?? ei voi pit????;
Pelkk???? anarkiaa on loosed upon maailmassa,
Veri-himmennetty tide on loosed, ja kaikkialla
Tilaisuuteen Syytt??myysolettama on hukkunut;
Paras puuttuu kaikki vakaumuksensa, mutta huonoin
Ovat t??ynn?? intohimoista intensiteetti.
Varmaankin jotkut paljastaminen on k??sill??;
Eik?? toisen Tulossa on k??sill??.
The Second Coming! Tuskin ovat ne sanat,
Kun laajan kuvan ulos Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere, hiekka, autiomaa.A-muotoinen leijona elin ja p???? on mies,
A gaze tyhj??ksi ja pitiless kuin aurinko,
On siirtym??ss?? sen hitaan reidet, vaikka kaikki siit??
Reel shadows on n??rk??stynyt Aavikon lintuja.
Kaamos putoaa j??lleen, mutta nyt tied??n
T??m?? kaksikymment?? vuosisatojen stony sleep
olivat hankalasta on painajainen on rocking kehto,
Ja mit?? karkea peto, sen tunnissa tulla kierroksella viimeinkin
Slouches kohti Betlehemin on syntynyt?
Now, I don’t speak Finnish, but there are some evocative lines here: “A-muotoinen leijona elin ja p???? on mies” rolls nicely off the tongue. (Try ordering it the next time you’re in your local McDonalds.) I also like “Tilaisuuteen Syytt??myysolettama on hukkunut.” If I ever have a son, that’s what I’m naming him.
But while our poem may be Finnished, our game is only half done. Now we have to strip the Finnish off it by copying this text into the translator and demanding, politely but firmly, that it return it into English. Here’s what it gives us:
Turning and turning to the ever-increasing gyre
The falcon can not hear the Falconer;
Things hajoamispisteess??; middle can not be considered;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lacking all conviction while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Is it the second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words,
When the broad picture out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere, sand, desert.A lion-shaped body and the head is male,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
It is moving in its slow thighs, despite the fact that all of the
Reel shadows have been indignant desert birds.
The darkness will fall again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed is a nightmare to have been rocking the cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem has been born?
I’m actually pretty surprised by how close Google gets to the original poem. In fact, while it may be scandalous to admit it, there are lines I like better than the original: I’m having a t-shirt printed up that says “Things hajoamispisteess??; middle can not be considered.” (Order yours today!) Yeats is probably spinning in his grave (although I suspect that The Cranberries set him whirling some time ago), but how else could we know that the famous verses on his gravestone would translate into Romanian as:
Distributie un rece ochi
Pe viata, pe moarte.
Horseman, trecem pe!
Here, the double translation is perfect. If we send this back through the translator, we get:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
In fact, I find it a little terrifying how neatly that phrase survives translation. There’s something so absolute about it, as if death is the same in every language. The fact that all language is a chimera ??? half monkey, half printing press ??? simply reflects our own divided nature. It’s a sign that language is a living thing, always taking new and strange shapes within our fevered, changeable minds. If we ever do produce a machine that can translate exactly, I suspect it will become the gravestone that we raise for our species. It may be inevitable, as Google swallows the world, but if that day does come, I’ll miss these odd turns of phrase that hint at poetry. For now, I can enjoy playing with this new toy, and so catch a prophetic glimpse of what rough beast slouches toward the Googleplex to be born.