Poetry in the Age of Mechanical Translation
Posted: June 15th, 2005, 10:59 am
The was a time when one needed to know a language in order to translate poems from it to another. But now there are computer programs which will automatically translate a webpage. Now, of course these translations are rough -- they sometimes make mistakes that could be classified as howlers, grammar and word choice are not as natural and sensible as a skilled humant ranslator; sometimes they even skip the translation of words, leaving them in the original language amidst other terms translated into the new language. But, I submit, in the realm of poetry all this doesn't necessarily matter, indeed it can help! Randomness and mechanics combine to form a new style. With the help of translation programs, works in a foreign language can become instantly readable surrealist/dadaist poems!