“The meat was adopted by the Holy Spirit…”
In another thread Joseph Gannon supplied us with the Google translation of the first paragraph of Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical. Below are the computer-generated translations of the Nicene Creed as found in the Declaration “Dominus Iesus.” The first is from the German text, and it is actually an improvement. An earlier version began: “Before Mister Jesus drove into the sky…”
These are the essential content of the Christian creed: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, everything created has heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible world. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, God’s native son from the father was born before all time:… For us people and for our salvation, he is from Heaven came, the meat was adopted by the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary and is man become. He was for us was crucified under Pontius Pilate, has suffered and is buried in is on the third day rose again according to the Scripture, and ascended into the sky. He sits on the rights of the father and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, his reign will not end his. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord is alive makes, from the father showing, with the father and the son adored and glorified, which is spoken, through the prophets, and the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church…. “
The Italian version–the computer seems to have given up on the final verbs:
These are the contents key of the profession of faith, Christian: “I believe in one God, Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, Only-begotten Son of God, born from the Father before all ages: God from God, Light from Light, God’s truth from God’s truth, begotten, not created, consubstantial with the Father, for half of which were created all things. For us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and operates the Spirit Santo was embodied in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was made man. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered, was buried and the third days again second to the Scriptures, ascended to heaven, sits to the right of the Father, will again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Spirit Santo, who is Lord and gives the life, and proceeds from the Father. With the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, and talked for half of the prophets. I believe the Church, one holy catholic and apostolic. Professo one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Aspetto the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to be.”
This is really funny.
Actually it was David Nickol. Credit where credit is due.
As to the main point, are you suggesting that a robot with artificial intelligence is not quite ready to understand the profession of faith? I remember attending a lecture, say around 1958, on the subject of machine translations. It did not look promising then. There is intelligence and there is intelligence. Human intelligence sometimes does very well. As a counterexample, however, I can point to a homily I heard yesterday. The homilist seemed to think that Jesus and the disciples sailed across the sea of Galilee in the Gospel text and the crowd ran around (?!) the shore and go there first. He wondered how that could have happened.
A number of years ago, I worked under an editor who had been a junior editor for the publication Cross Currents in the 1950s/60s. He told me that the journal had in the early 1950s published a translation of an article by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Knowing that Teilhard was going to be in New York just before the article went to press, the editors asked him to stop by to go over a couple of points that the translator was uncertain about. During the meeting the translator said: “Father, here I was really unsure. What do you think?” After a couple of minutes the great man replied, “I really am not sure what I intended here, but what you have seems fine to me.”
It would probably be well to refrain from posting such ‘translations.’ After all, who knows whether some Liturgical Commission might decide to adopt them? The risk may be too great.
It would probably be well to refrain from posting such ‘translations.’ After all, who knows whether some Liturgical Commission might decide to adopt them? The risk may be too great.
A few years ago I sent an article about Schnitzler (in German) through Google’s translation service. Sigmund Freud came out “Victory-mouth (Sieg+Mund) Joy.”
sorry for the double post. Honest, it was the computer, not I!
According to Sandro Magister, the Vatican has run into translation problems (or at least interpretation problems) in China. Maybe they used Google?
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1339411?eng=y
Hee, hee!
I do believe the Holy Spirit is having some fun with this! Remember the Tower of Babel?
Well, She is at it again!