Machine Translation Software Usability - Semantics Preservation

Semantics Preservation

Do repeated re-translations preserve the semantics of the original sentence? For example, consider the following English input passed multiple times into and out of French using the Google translator as of 27 December 2006:

Better a day earlier than a day late. ==> Améliorer un jour plus tôt qu'un jour tard. ==> To improve one day earlier than a day late. ==> Pour améliorer un jour plus tôt qu'un jour tard. ==> To improve one day earlier than a day late.

As noted above and in, this kind of round-trip translation is a very unreliable method of evaluation.

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Famous quotes containing the word preservation:

    The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.
    Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)