{"id":3598,"date":"2021-03-09T15:35:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T15:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/?p=3598"},"modified":"2021-03-09T15:35:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T15:35:31","slug":"beat-the-machine-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/FLD\/2021\/03\/09\/beat-the-machine-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Beat the Machine: 4 Little Words, 1 Big Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"By Sam Mowry<\/p>\n

How it can be March 2021 when it feels like it never stopped being March 2020, I\u2019ll never know! But it\u2019s a new month and a new chance to compare translations. If you need a quick refresher, you can read about the premise of the Beat the Machine mini translation slam in our inaugural post\u00a0here<\/a>. Very simply, we\u2019re out to prove how much better human translators are than machines and maybe learn something from one another in the process. After last month\u2019s technical beast, we\u2019re going in a very different direction this month with by far our shortest sentence ever:<\/p>\n

Le r\u00e9veil fut brutal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, it really is just four words long! This is an excerpt from the book L\u2019Insomnie<\/em> by Tahar Ben Jelloun. Rather than showing you what Google Translate would have given us (feel free to check, if you\u2019re curious!), here is the context for this sentence, which ends a chapter:<\/p>\n

Mes r\u00eaves \u00e9taient denses et riches. Je me voyais voguer sur les flots bleus de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, comme si j\u2019\u00e9tais sur des skis. J\u2019allais tr\u00e8s vite, des oiseaux de toutes les couleurs m\u2019accompagnaient. Je chantais, je dansais, comme dans un film de Fred Astaire ! J\u2019\u00e9tais heureux et je crois m\u00eame que je m\u2019entichai d\u2019une femme brune \u00e0 la longue chevelure. Mais quelqu\u2019un me disait \u00e0 l\u2019oreille : \u00ab Attention, c\u2019est la mort ; il arrive parfois qu\u2019elle se d\u00e9guise pour faire diversion ! \u00bb C\u2019est alors que je suis tomb\u00e9 dans la mer, je me noyais. Le r\u00e9veil fut brutal.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the rest of these words before it, I\u2019m only asking for a translation of the very last sentence<\/strong> there. Four words, including a tense we don\u2019t have in English and a noun that doesn\u2019t have a direct equivalent. There are a million ways to go with this, so let\u2019s see what you do!<\/p>\n

Submit your translation here<\/a> by March 31, 2021<\/strong>, and the blog post discussing it will go up in April!<\/p>\n

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