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Comment by alberto_ol | Hacker News Reader

I tried to translate this headline from the Guardian to Italian: "Ursula von der Leyen praises watered-down vehicle emissions compromise"

Firefox translation is wrong: "Ursula von der Leyen elogia il compromesso sulle emissioni dei veicoli annacquati"

It is the compronise that is "watered-down" not the vehicles.

Google translation is better: "Ursula von der Leyen elogia il compromesso annacquato sulle emissioni dei veicoli"

Both Deepl and Papageo don't translate "watered-down" and it could make sense, since "watered-down" can be considered redundant.

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> and it could make sense, since "watered-down" can be considered redundant.

I don't think that makes sense and isn't correct, a translation should be a translation without subjective copy editing. It may be redundant or not, but it's not the job of the translation tool/service/person to decide.

This is a fairly clear case, but there can be more subtle issues. For example, consider this sentence (that I made up):

    We got in the car and drove across the island.

Google translate renders this in Spanish as follows:

    Nos subimos al coche y cruzamos la isla.
    "We got into the car and crossed the island."

This preserves the 'across' part but not the 'drove' part, which is left implicit. That is not an accident: in contrast to English, Spanish tends to be 'verb framed' rather than 'satellite framed' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verb_framing). In this particular case the translation is arguably fine because it is obvious from context that the manner of crossing the island was by driving. I am not a native Spanish speaker, but I think that there would be no way to make the 'driving' part explicit in Spanish without it sounding redundant and odd.

I'm no Spanish native speaker either (only some years experience), but I'm pretty sure your example would be translated to:

> Subimos al coche y condujimos a través de la isla

> We got in the car and drove across the island.

Making it explicit that you drove across the island :)

I think it sounds a bit weird to use the verb 'conducir' like that (which is why Google translate chooses not to do so). In any case, there are many other such examples of Spanish tending to encode path in the verb rather than manner, even if this particular one doesn't work.

Native Spanish speaker here.

If I had to translate "We drove across the island", and make the car explicit without the first clause giving context, I'd say:

> Cruzamos la isla en el coche

> We crossed the island in the car

Beyond the simplest cases, all translations have “subjective copy editing”. If two languages were 1:1 with each other, they would be the same language. For an extreme example of how not 1:1 translation can be, go read up on Toki Pona, but this is a fundamental property of translation.

Just think about all the idioms that we use in English that would be totally baffling if translated literally.

I know not everything can be translated 1:1. But if in the cases it can, I don't think removing things "that could be considered redundant" is the right approach if you want to have correct translations.

But it actually can be correct to remove redundancy. In Spanish, a double negative is the correct thing to do in many cases, but it would translate poorly to English, even though it can be literally translated as such.

These decisions naturally crop up all over the place during translation. It feels pointless to make blanket statements like you did about the removal of “watered down”. Without knowing that specific language intimately, I can’t say that it is wrong, and this is a very simple case.

Good quality translation will always be somewhat subjective.

To a first approximation, nothing can be translated 1:1.

It's a genuinely hard problem. Even the idea of "correct translation" is slippery.

Yeh! A lot of words have dozens of meanings; many carry cultural meanings and shades, which can further depend on context. Some can be positive or pejorative depending on pronunciation or emphasis... etc. it's endless!

Do you speak/understand more than one language? Honestly wondering, because if you do, I don't think this would be something you would think to be possible.

Language is not just a succession of tokens. It is used to convey meaning. A translation needs to convey the same meaning.

Thank you for clarifying what I said with different words :)

You're confusing a transliteration with a translation. And your standard readily breaks down when vernaculars & idioms are used. If a certain idiom doesn't exist in language A do you substitute it for the equivalent in language B? Or do you persist in writing nonsense no language B speaker will ever understand?

ChatGPT 4:

> "Ursula von der Leyen elogia il compromesso sulle emissioni dei veicoli attenuato"

> Note: "Watered-down" is translated as "attenuato" in this context, which means "weakened" or "diluted." The term can be subjective, so ensure the tone and implication match the intent in the original context.

ChatGPT 3.5:

> "Ursula von der Leyen elogia il compromesso sulle emissioni dei veicoli ridotto"

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