{"id":3336,"date":"2020-07-01T16:32:38","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T16:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/?p=3336"},"modified":"2026-04-12T04:17:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T04:17:57","slug":"beat-the-machine-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/2020\/07\/01\/beat-the-machine-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Beat the Machine: A Mini Virtual Translation Slam by the ATA FLD"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Beat the Machine: A Mini Virtual Translation Slam by the ATA FLD<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>Greetings, fellow FLD members (and interested onlookers)!<\/p>\n

My name is Sam Mowry and I\u2019m here to help us all translate better. Strong words, I know, but one thing I\u2019ve found to be true in my translation career is that the more exposure you have to translations, particularly good<\/em> translations, the better translator you become. To that end, this is the first in what I hope will become an ongoing series of posts here in \u00c0 Propos<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The premise is simple: I\u2019ve never met a translator who, when confronted with someone else\u2019s translation, doesn\u2019t secretly or not-so-secretly think to themselves, \u201cI could have done it better<\/em>.\u201d Moreover, as human translators, we know we\u2019re vastly superior to every machine translation option on the market. We\u2019re going to combine those concepts into a monthly \u201cbeat the machine\u201d virtual translation slam (and by that I mean slamming those machine translations into the ground<\/em>!).<\/p>\n

Every two months, I will post a French sentence with an English translation produced by a widely available machine translation engine. This will incite the faithful readers of this blog to rise to the challenge and show how much better it could be by submitting their own versions of the translated sentence. The following month, I will publish a blog post where I share some of the best submissions and discuss what makes them so good. This is a chance to show what a difference the human touch makes and improve our own translation practices in the process by seeing how other translators approach the same problem.<\/p>\n

Sound good?<\/p>\n

The first sentence is:<\/p>\n

L\u2019excellentissime pianiste classique autrichien Friedrich Gulda n\u2019e\u00fbt peut-\u00eatre pas \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u2019accord, lui qui ne cessa de transgresser les deux grands ordres (jazz et classique) en les reprisant et d\u00e9prisant dans des concerts qui filaient standards de jazz, classiques des classiques.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fun, right? Hat tip to FLD member Beth Smith, who provided this sentence. Here is what DeepL spat out:<\/p>\n

Perhaps the excellent Austrian classical pianist Friedrich Gulda would not have agreed, as he never stopped transgressing the two great orders (jazz and classical) by reproducing them in concerts that spun jazz standards, classics from classics.<\/em><\/p>\n

You are no doubt chomping at the bit already to submit your much better translation of this sentence. You can do that HERE<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Submissions must be received by July 22, 2020. The follow-up blog post discussing the best solutions will be posted on or around August 1, 2020.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please note the following:<\/p>\n