{"id":3494,"date":"2020-12-11T16:42:04","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T16:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/?p=3494"},"modified":"2026-04-12T04:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T04:15:19","slug":"beat-the-machine-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/2020\/12\/11\/beat-the-machine-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Beat the Machine: 2020 Wrap Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Photo Credit: Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/a>Welcome to part two of our second Beat the Machine challenge and our last Beat the Machine post of 2020! In our September post<\/a>, I gave a sentence to be translated and asked FLD members to submit their own versions, presumably improving upon the machine translated option. Now we\u2019ll go over some particularly interesting options.<\/p>\n

As a refresher, this is what we were working with, taken from Le Devoir<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Mais si les relations sont aujourd’hui plus conflictuelles que jamais, il \u00e9tait pour ainsi dire \u00e9crit dans le ciel que la formidable croissance \u00e9conomique chinoise des quarante derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, orchestr\u00e9e qui plus est, depuis huit ans, par un r\u00e9gime Xi particuli\u00e8rement autoritaire et expansionniste, finirait par d\u00e9boucher sur une lutte de pouvoir de grande envergure entre la Chine et un empire am\u00e9ricain qui n’est forc\u00e9ment plus ce qu’il \u00e9tait.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s what Google Translate gave us:<\/p>\n

But if relations are today more conflictual than ever, it was almost written in the sky that the tremendous Chinese economic growth of the last forty years, orchestrated moreover, for eight years, by a particularly authoritarian and expansionist Xi regime, would eventually lead to a large-scale power struggle between China and an American empire that is not necessarily what it used to be.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We have plenty to work with, so let\u2019s dig in! We\u2019ll start with each phrase before talking about strategies for breaking down the sentence as a whole.<\/p>\n

Mais si<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSi\u201d to start a sentence is a well-known and fully despised French convention. The five respondents all chose different and equally valid solutions: \u201cHowever,\u201d \u201cThough,\u201d \u201cSince,\u201d are very appropriate. Two particularly interesting options here were simply starting the sentence with \u201cAnd\u2026\u201d which is a fun way to mix up sentence structures in English (and reflets the French! You can view the full paragraph this sentence was taken from in the September post). One respondent, Beth Smith, foreshadowed the broad timeline of the rest of the sentence by starting with \u201cNowadays\u2026\u201d. I particularly like this option because it conveys the sense of \u201cSo, this thing\u2026\u201d that the \u201csi\u201d hooks into, but also incorporates a time element.<\/p>\n

\u2026les relations sont aujourd\u2019hui plus conflictuelles que jamais\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cRelations\u201d and \u201crelationship\u201d were both used, and both are valid here. The international aspect suggests \u201crelations\u201d (as in \u201cforeign relations,\u201d \u201cinternational relations\u201d), but since it\u2019s between two specific entities, I think relationship is also applicable. All of the human respondents discarded Google Translate\u2019s painfully literal \u201cconflictual,\u201d which is apparently a real English word. Interestingly, out of five submissions, they all selected one of two options. \u201cContentious\u201d was more popular, with three submissions, and the other two used \u201cfraught.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026il \u00e9tait pour ainsi dire \u00e9crit dans le ciel\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here we come face to face with Google Translate\u2019s nemesis: figures of speech. I assure you that no skywriting was involved in announcing this news. In another distinct win for the humans, none of the human translators fell for this trap. Many good options here: \u201cit almost seems like fate,\u201d \u201cit was inevitable,\u201d \u201cwe might have predicted,\u201d and \u201cIt was almost a foregone conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026que la formidable croissance \u00e9conomique chinoise des quarante derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, orchestr\u00e9e qui plus est, depuis huit ans, par un r\u00e9gime Xi particuli\u00e8rement autoritaire et expansionniste\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Formidable had a number of good options: incredible, remarkable are both very solid. My favorite, from Andie Ho, was \u201cprodigious.\u201d The rest of this section is frankly straightforward (\u201ceconomic growth,\u201d \u201cauthoritarian and expansionist\u201d), and the real problems come with how you fit it in with the rest, so we\u2019ll address that later. One fun twist I particularly liked was offered by Ben Karl, who opted for \u201cfour decades\u201d of economic growth instead of forty years. Since \u201ceight years\u201d comes up only a few words later, this is particularly clever to avoid repeating \u201clast x years\u201d almost immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026finirait par d\u00e9boucher sur\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFinir par\u201d is another known and loathed French construction. All five translators combined \u201cfinirait par d\u00e9boucher sur\u201d into one expression, rather than getting bogged down by needing to render every word in English, with something like \u201cwould result in leading to\u201d or similar. Good options included \u201clead to,\u201d \u201cend in,\u201d \u201cend up as.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026une lutte de pouvoir de grande envergure\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Google Translate gave us \u201clarge-scale,\u201d which is adequate. Two translators used \u201cmajor,\u201d and my favorite option was submitted by Andie Ho, who used \u201call-out brawl.\u201d That seems a little bit more aggressive than the French, but it certainly is<\/em> large-scale, and I love the idiomatic use of brawl.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u2026entre la Chine et un empire am\u00e9ricain qui n’est forc\u00e9ment plus ce qu’il \u00e9tait.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone stuck pretty close to the source here, perhaps as an effect of fatigue from battling through the rest of the sentence. But it\u2019s not inaccurate to say, \u201cbetween China and an American empire that is no longer what it once was.\u201d A more literary option might be \u201can American empire no longer in its heyday,\u201d or perhaps \u201can American empire past its prime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sentence breaks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously, this sentence is a little unwieldy in English, and are a couple options to handle that. One person left it as one sentence, which is ultimately fine. Two people set off a section in the middle with em dashes, and one person used both em dashes and also segmented the first section as a separate sentence (\u201cNowadays, the relationship is more contentious than ever.\u201d) The decision of how much to split off into a separate sentence depends heavily on the surrounding context and how much you want to vary sentence length for that reason.<\/p>\n

Piecing together some of the best parts of all the sentences, here is a suggested composite:<\/p>\n

Since the US\u2013China relationship is as contentious as it has ever been, it almost seems like fate that China\u2019s prodigious economic growth over the last forty years\u2014orchestrated for the last eight by an especially authoritarian and expansionist Xi Jinping regime\u2014would eventually lead to an all-out brawl between China and an American empire decidedly past its prime.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019m really pleased with that! That\u2019s a considered sentence that does a number of clever things and avoids all of the worst pitfalls Google Translate replicated. Chalk up another win for the humans!<\/p>\n

Did you forget to submit a translation in time? Not to worry! Share your version on Twitter and tag the French Language Division (@ATA_FLD<\/a>) and me,\u00a0@SamTranslates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you would like to submit a sentence for a future slam, I would like that very much! You can contact me, Sam Mowry, directly at sam [at] frenchtranslation.expert or on Twitter at the handle listed above. You can also contact the\u00a0\u00c0 Propos\u00a0Editor Ben Karl at ben [at] bktranslation.com.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to help launch a similar slam but into French, please also reach out! We would love to get this going in both directions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to part two of our second Beat the Machine challenge and our last Beat the Machine post of 2020! In our September post, I gave a sentence to be translated and asked FLD members to submit their own versions, presumably improving upon the machine translated option. Now we\u2019ll go over some particularly interesting options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beat-the-machine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4851,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions\/4851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}