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The T, in its infinite wisdom, has put up machine translations of its web site for public consumption. That's the sort of thing professional translators half-laugh and half-cringe at. The ATA has a whole campaign to educate businesses that want to have translations done, so that they don't come across looking like idiots.
The T, of course, says that getting the translations done manually would be "prohibitively expensive". They've actually put up disclaimers saying "this isn't meant to be a perfect translation". I find this disrespectful of anybody who might be using one of these translated pages to attempt to get some useful information. The T seems to be thinking about people who are here as tourists, so apparently it doesn't matter to them whether or not the translation is adequate. Idiots. The people they're intending the web site for are the people who aren't familiar with the system in the first place, and presenting them with a mangled translation that they admit isn't great isn't going to make things any better. Apparently one of the categories of things that doesn't translate very well is the station names. Does this sound like a good idea to anybody?
I would write the T and the Globe a nasty letter, but I think I'd better calm down first. The article I'm ranting about, for those interested, is here.
ETA: I looked at the "French" version of the site. When they talk about T passes, they use the verb form (as in "pass the ketchup"). The first rule of machine translation is Thou shalt not use machine translation on specialized vocabulary without having it checked by a human being. This would be hilarious if it wasn't supposed to be useful.
The T, of course, says that getting the translations done manually would be "prohibitively expensive". They've actually put up disclaimers saying "this isn't meant to be a perfect translation". I find this disrespectful of anybody who might be using one of these translated pages to attempt to get some useful information. The T seems to be thinking about people who are here as tourists, so apparently it doesn't matter to them whether or not the translation is adequate. Idiots. The people they're intending the web site for are the people who aren't familiar with the system in the first place, and presenting them with a mangled translation that they admit isn't great isn't going to make things any better. Apparently one of the categories of things that doesn't translate very well is the station names. Does this sound like a good idea to anybody?
I would write the T and the Globe a nasty letter, but I think I'd better calm down first. The article I'm ranting about, for those interested, is here.
ETA: I looked at the "French" version of the site. When they talk about T passes, they use the verb form (as in "pass the ketchup"). The first rule of machine translation is Thou shalt not use machine translation on specialized vocabulary without having it checked by a human being. This would be hilarious if it wasn't supposed to be useful.
