Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Why machines can't be trusted to do Bible translation

Please enjoy this letter from a student.

"Dear Profs.,


I know it's only Thursday, but here's something start your weekend.

Today, working on my final assignment in hermeneutics, I was comparing Joel 2:28-32 with Acts 2:17-21. For this passage, I.H. Marshall has produced a nice comparison of the LXX text with the Greek NT text,[1] but the Greek is transliterated, which I have more trouble reading than the Greek alphabet. So, I turned to Google Translate, which actually does a pretty good job with Greek in the Greek alphabet. The attached screenshot is the result.


I plan to show this the next time someone in a church asks why Wycliffe doesn't use machine translation. (We actually do use software to produce approximate adaptations of text, but not full-fledged translations.)

By the way, thank you, gentlemen, for all your work on the two courses I've taken this spring and summer. What a tremendous blessing! (And what a lot of work, too!)

Blessings!"

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