Why Computers Cannot Translate Foreign Languages

Many young language students think that they are quite intelligent to use a computer to translate their first year language homework. These students often use a computer to translate their first assignment, and are sent into shock shortly after when their teachers give them their assignment back with a big D stamped in the corner of it. To make matters worse, the entire paper is highlighted with errors.

What could have caused the computer to fail its job? After all, computers are perfect, right? Wrong. Language conversion is a task that is too complicated for computers to perform accurately at this time. This is because many languages have extremely different grammatical rules, as well as phrases that do not translate to other languages. The phrase "Whats up" is a great example of this. When this phrase is directly translated into another language it loses it's assumed meaning of "How are you doing", and normally gains the meaning of asking "What is elevated."

As you can clearly see, this phrase and the way it would translate in many languages are vastly different. To make matters even worse, this is an extreme example. The English language is small of small phrases that don't properly translate into other languages.

To make matters even worse there are some words that translate perfectly, but have extremely different meanings or connotations. A great example of that is the word excited. In the German language almost any dictionary or computer would translate this word to "aufgerecht" which literally means "excited". In practice, however, you would only use aufgerecht if you were about to throw a fit (that type of excited). If you wanted to say "excited" in its more common American usage you would have to say the word "neugerig" which translates to curious.

This difference between languages makes it very hard for people to translate things between two languages (even if they fluently speak both languages). This is because they often have to translate meaning, translating the text directly would lead to a drastic loss in meaning. In some cases direct translation can turn a very well written Shakespearean play into a random string of gibberish.

So the next time you are thinking of letting a computer turn a phrase or let the bulldog out, it's probably a good idea to consider that machines have a hard time understanding these terms. This is why learning a foreign language can provide you with such an edge over the competition in this day and age.