The power transformer featured on this page header may appear to belong to another context, but in actual fact it functions somewhat like a translator, converting electricity from one voltage to another… with some loss in the process! Who does not know the expression "Lost in translation", now so well known that it has even become the title of a film. Why can't translation be a more simple and easy process?

Did you ever wonder why computers, in spite of their power and rapid execution, are not very good translators?

Remember "Big Blue", the most powerful computer in the world? It required years of development before narrowly winning a chess game against a champion player. But aren't the rules of chess rather simple? Players can only move some pieces on certain squares. And the rules are very straightforward!

Now, imagine yourself faced with a sentence to translate: even though certain words have well known equivalents in another language, the majority of them can be translated using of a variety of equivalents, if not by dozens of more or less appropriate expressions, according to the context. To translate an English word as simple as "run", Termium proposes no less than 69 solutions! The sheer number of choices to make is bewildering… and this is where the computer fails utterly.

It was calculated, based on a comparison between the number of transistors in a computer and the number of neuronal connections in the human brain, that the brain has approximately one thousand times more information processing capacity than the computer. Furthermore the brain's operating mode is so complex that we do not even fully understand how it works… difficult to mimic, the brain has so far proven impossible to duplicate.

Or, try this little experiment: if you have access to translation software, translate a sentence into another language, then translate the result back into the original. Repeat this process four or five times and you will soon be laughing out loud!

The computer is indispensable for storing vast quantities of data in easily accessible memory and and for performing tiresome calculations. That is exactly how it functions best: remembering a sentence translated five years ago, comparing it with the one at hand today, finding the differences, proposing a translation (quite imperfect, sadly!) or corrections to be made, counting the words in a document, etc. Admittedly, the computer has become the translator's irreplaceable collaborator.

For accurate translation of all meanings and nuances from the source document into the target language, while creating the impression that the translation is really an original document written in the target language, seasoned translators are unbeatable. (And they have a good many years of employment security ahead!)

But we're not quite finished: have the same document translated by different translators, even senior ones, and you will obtain different interpretations every time. Which version is the right one? Let the reader be the judge… translation is not a technical process, it is an art. Moreover, it is rewarded with prestigious prizes, such the Canada Council for the Arts Translation Prize... what more can we add?