The Computer into the Harbour

There used to be a favourite anecdote among translators. Supposedly a true story, it went like this: A supercomputer capable of translating the world’s major languages is to be introduced to the public. To showcase its benefits, a senior executive asks the computer to translate a line from Scripture into Chinese. It is Christ’s observation “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,” and the computer does as it is told, except no one present speaks enough Chinese to gauge the quality of the translation. So the computer is asked to translate the Chinese back into English, and it returns the words “The whiskey is strong, but the meat is rotten.” Causing translators no end of mirth, the story suggests that no matter how cleverly constructed they may be, machines will never seriously compete with humans in mastering the complexity of human language. Yet just as the Trojans ridiculed Cassandra’s warning about the wooden horse not be- cause it was so absurd but perhaps because they were simply not sure and their situation so precarious, the anecdote provides comic relief to the translators’ fear that the computer will one day have done its homework and become as good as them.

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