By using the method of data and statistic analysis, Google Translate can provide excellent services in many domains, and outperformed many other online translation tools.
But how well can it handle literary translation?
I tested the tool by using it to translate two short paragraphs: one from Chinese to English, and the other vice versa.
1.
"一个冬夜，我们并肩走着。地上的溶雪混合着污泥。你走在前面，我不习惯走在雪地上，所以慢慢地在后面跟着。不知什么时候，你开始说起共产主义来。"
Here is what Google got:
"A winter night, we walked side by side. The
melting snow on the ground mixed with sludge. You walk in front, I am not used
to go in the snow, so followed slowly behind. I do not know, you start to talk
about communism."
Not bad, really. Except the tense and the last sentence. Google uses the right tense in the first sentence but then becomes inconsistent."I do not know" in the last sentence is completely wrong. "不知什么时候" means "I didn't know when it was".
2. An excerpt from "A true account of talking to the sun at Fire Island" by Frank O'Hara
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake at last.
"No, go I must, they're calling me."
"Who are they?" Rising
he said
"Some day you'll know.
They're calling to you too."
Darkly he
rose, and then I slept.
Goggle:
"孙，都不去！“我已经醒了最后。
”没有，我要，他们给我打电话。“
是谁呢？”瑞星他说：
“有一天，你就会知道。
他们打电话给你了。“
猜谜他站起身，然后我睡了。
Google is obsessed with transliteration; at least when the target text is Chinese. "Sun" and "Rising", for instance, are not literally translated but become names: "孙" and ”瑞星". It makes a couple of other mistakes: "don't go" should be "不要走" instead of "都不去"(all not leaving). "Darkly he rose" should be "他陰沉/ 神秘地升起" instead of "“猜谜他站起身" (solve a puzzle he stand up). "Calling" becomes "打电话" (making a phone call)-for some reasons we just know (intuitively), that there is no way "calling" would refer to "making a phone call".
Literary work is original, creative, and definitely not routine-not a myth that can be easily solved by statistic analysis. After all, when it comes to literary translations, we human beings, too, have a difficult time of it.
