AI AT TIMES OVERDOES THINGS

By Carlos de Paula

A client of mine had a problem that seemed impossible to solve. He was born in Croatia, during World War II, and migrated to Argentina with his parents a while after birth. In Argentina an overzealous translator converted his name as it appeared in his birth certificate into the Spanish equivalent. However, the name was never officially changed, and USCIS wanted to see a name change decree. Now in the USA to live close by his daughter, he could not get his green card because all he had was the translation, which converted his name into Spanish. I found the solution easily: I told him to get a copy of his Yugoslavian document in Serbo-Croatian, and I would translate into English properly. Issue solved, happy client.

My dear Argentine colleague failed to observe a major rule in document translation: never translate names.

Guess who does this all the time? You guessed right, AI. AI translation software cares less about  translation rules, and normally translates names, last names of people, names of cities and streets that should not be translated. Thus, Miguel easily turns into Michael, and Maria into Mary. Those are the easy ones: Tiago turns into James, for example. Certain cities, for instance, Lisbon, have to be translated (originally Lisboa in Portugal), while others, such as Paris, are not. AI may be compelled to translate Sao Paulo into Saint Paul, quickly turning a Brazilian into a Minnesotan. By the way, names of Academic Institutions are by convention not translated as well. In a simple document this is easy to pick up and correct, in a large one or in a book translation full of names it can turn into a nightmare.  

Additionally, AI Translation makes a huge confusion with dates, often failing to invert month and day from some documents, without looking into context. Sometimes it does it right, then wrong in the same document, further compounding the problem. It also has a bit of a problem with commas and periods in numbers.

Notice that transliteration is different from translation, but that is the subject of another post.

An AI Translation editor with a keen eye for detail and experience should be hired to avoid confusion.

Carlos de Paula is one of the top Brazilian Portuguese translators in the USA since 1982. And now a top Portuguese AI Translation editor as well.