An Experiment in Automatic Translation




AltaVista offers a limited automatic translation service here. I thought it would be interesting to see how mangled a text could become by running it through several translation iterations in different languages. The text I chose was "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. My reasons for this choice were twofold. Firstly, it's a short text. The translation engine at AltaVista is designed to stop translating after a certain length. (This is intended to encourage users to buy Systran, the software that drives the translation demo.) A longer text would have to have been chopped up into several small sections and then re-assembled: a tedious process. As it is, "The New Colossus" was just a bit too long, and I had to translate it one half at a time. The second reason I chose this text was its thematic significance. This poem was commissioned to adorn the base of the Staute of Liberty, and was intended to verbally echo the Statue's visual message welcoming immigrants from around the world to the American Melting Pot. This idea seemed to mesh nicely with the multiple languages of the automatic translator.

Here's the original text:


The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

--- Emma Lazarus




I started by using the translation engine to convert this text into French, and then back into English. (The French were the ones, after all, who gave us the statue). I then repeated the process with German, Italian, Portugese, and Spanish. Here's the final text. It reads like Racter on PCP:


Nuovo Colossus

Not like the giant of the bronze of the Greek of the reputation,
With the conquest of califourchon of length of the members in the track with the track;
Sea-washing with ours, she cancels the increase for the indication of the sun here
The efficient woman with torch/flare, of that the flame
Is screw of the jailed lightning and his to nut/mother,
That it indicates of exiles they. Of the relative marcatura
Heraushandrougeoie weltwillkommen; the relative the smooth eyes controls
Jeté of Portluft, that one that order ponticello in the double of the cities.

The " memory, the old track, storied splendour! " it crosses
With labbri the calm " that this one I gives tired his, its handspikes,
You who the breathed liberations accumulate more when blottiesanwaerter,
Wastefulness deficient of its battery of the part of the startings.
You, person without the house, last quechetransmit-quechetransmit-transmitting this jeté of the storm
In the elevator of the air my light bulb near the door "

-- Emma Lazarus he gold in




"Nuovo Colossus" copyright 1998 Dan Sissman.

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This page last maintained 3/18/1999.

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