Telephone is a kids’ game where the children sit in a circle and pass around a message by whispering in the neighbor’s ear. The game is to see how garbled the message gets by the time it makes it all the way around the circle. My 21st century version of telephone is played solitaire, using Google Translate.
- No, the only option at this point is to tackle her, landing you both deep in the snow
- (English -> French) Non, la seule option possible à ce point est à sa face, vous êtes tous deux d’atterrissage dans la neige
- (French -> Italian) No, l’unica opzione a questo punto è sul suo volto, si sono entrambi di atterraggio in mezzo alla neve
- (Italian -> Spanish) No, la única opción en este momento está en su cara, han de aterrizaje en la nieve
- (Spanish -> Chinese) 沒有，唯一的選擇在這個時候是你的臉，已經降落在雪地裡
- (Chinese -> Estonian) Ei, ainus võimalus sel ajal on oma nägu, on lossitud lumi
- (Estonian -> Afrikaans) Nee, die enigste opsie is op die oomblik is op jou gesig, dit geland in die sneeu
- (Afrikaans -> Turkish) Hayır, şu anda tek seçenek in your face, bu kar indi
- (Turkish -> English) No, currently the only option in your face, the snow fell
Hilarity ensues! (As usual, one of the kids seems to be sabatoging the game. Here we can see that it is the child translating from Afrikaans to Turkish.)
Cheap Talk 
10 comments
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December 28, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Peter
For all you equilibrium-lovers out there: http://translationparty.com/
December 28, 2009 at 12:07 pm
jeff
nice! with initial conditions “domo arigato mister roboto” the equilibrium is “The facilitator is very roboto”
December 28, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Ryan
This is an interesting game… I’m not sure if I would call the Afrikaans to Turkish translation “sabotage” but I can imagine that being a particularly weak link. (I also prefer not to be labeled a saboteur just because I wasn’t paying attention and had to make something up.)
My hunch is that in order to reduce the number of translation bridges they build (which would start out as n factorial–a lot even for a company as ambitious about assembling gobs of data as is Google), I expect they use some intermediate language to translate into and back out of. The intermediate language is probably not any specific human language, but rather an abstract and flexible language optimized for their algorithms. Whether you want to call it a “language” or not is up to you, but there has got to be some kind of hub.
Therefore, even languages which are somewhat easily translated between each other (surely there has got to be a good Afrikaans-Turkish translator out there) may fare poorly in Google translate because (1) the link isn’t common enough for Google to make a good direct link (lack of information and lack of incentives) and (2) at least one of the languages isn’t expressed well in the intermediate language. I think a good test for this would be Korean-Japanese translations, since they are very similar linguistically and dissimilar to English, for which I am guessing they optimized their hub language (if English is not in fact the hub language itself).
Hence, Google is probably playing this game of telephone every time it translates between two less-common languages. Really, I am actually pretty impressed with the translation coming back out as well as it does–but I think you shouldn’t be too assured by a similar translation coming back out. Reflexivity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a good translation, and I am guessing Google through their own testing and tweaking has (perhaps inadvertently) optimized their system to be able to untranslate its own translations. Additionally, the more a system relies on an intermediate language, the more it will require this reflexivity. So, if you want to play the game right (and find the real “saboteur”), you really need some independent way to verify the translations.
December 28, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Anonymous
Actually, by the time it reaches the Estonian=>Afrikaans phase, it is already “mistranslated”. The Afrikaans phrase reads: ”
“No, the only option at the moment is on your face, it lands in the snow.”
December 29, 2009 at 3:15 am
alex
it’s actually the French translation which introduces the “face” part, which is hard to understand
January 6, 2010 at 11:42 am
Ryan
with initial conditions どうもありがとう、ミスターロボット(doumo arigatou, mr roboto) the equilibrium is Thank you Mr. Robot. Pretty good. (yes, you do need that comma.) The problem is the intermediate steps are strange. (They put 氏 in front of Robot instead of after.)
January 31, 2010 at 3:14 pm
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Very useful and informative article. I have learned a great deal, thank you and keep up the good work.
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