by Harry Cooper
In this current time, there is a prominent issue regarding world health which as I am sure we all know is Covid-19 or ‘Coronavirus’. This is the largest outbreak certainly in 100 years and, because of this, the government devised a mandatory lockdown to help contain the virus. All my family, currently are trying their best to stay connected with friends as we cannot meet them in real life. Luckily for us, there are brilliant communication aids sitting in our pocket. They give us so many abilities that were not present 50 years ago. Why send a letter when you have simple text messages? Why book expensive trips to visit people when we have a portable window to almost anywhere in our FaceTime and Zoom applications. We have so many useful and complex communication devices which have made the world feel smaller by breaking down the barriers of long distance conversations. When letters once took 2 months to reach Australia by boat, we can now send the messages via text in under 10 seconds.
My example to Australia was not coincidental: in Australia, they speak the English language and so transmissions between our countries are easy due to there being no language barrier. However, as soon as a language difference is created, it becomes a whole new ball game. There are of course many translation aids today such as Google Translate and Microsoft Translate and so that issue seems to have been fixed. And yet when I asked my teachers if Google Translate was a good idea, they all replied that it is easy to spot a machine has done it. I was curious as to why they would say this: these programs are widely used, with Google Translate believed to be serving 200 million people a day and, if you think about it, there seems to be no downside. They can help talk to pen friends or jog your memory on that elusive piece of vocabulary. And yet there still must be a downside otherwise why dissuade us from using it?
To investigate the negatives of Google Translate, I am going to find a recipe online for a simple food product with minimal steps and translate it back and forth into other languages using Google Translate (which has been indicated to be the most reliable one) and then finally back to English. These recipes will then be shown to further our understanding of these fractures in the system if there are any and answer the question on why these are not recommended by our teachers (and definitely not because it is a good laugh) for your education.
And this is the recipe I have chosen online. A simple recipe with five steps.
How to make simple pancakes:
Add 100 g of flour, 2 eggs and 300 ml to the bowl. Either milk 1 teaspoon, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon turmeric powder.
After a break, you can relax, sit for 30 minutes or start cooking immediately.
Alternatively, you can sleep on a baking sheet.
Brush your teeth and simmer until brown.
Add sugar and favorite candy powder. The kiln destroys the small shop in a plastic bag and cool for 2 months
Another recipe was put in for Soufflé which had more intricate commands. This was a long recipe so I only have here some of the most varied quotes:
“Put a half cups of milk, sprinkle with oil and fears.”
“But if you put egg in the egg then protein is the tray”
“Cellophane Lemon and mixed up with one of them, white in the bottom of the table”
From these wide variations of answers to a simple recipe, it is clear that these complex translators are just not reliable yet and that the reason teachers do not want us to use them is because the translations are (quite amusingly) inaccurate. So please, the next time you look at that French question and think ‘maybe I could translate a few words’, please don’t, as you have no idea how far away from your input you actually are or more importantly, what you might have said.
The Soufflé Recipe - The Pancakes Recipe
All the translations made on version 6.9.0
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