Translated texts often give themselves away by unusual word choice. In the worst case, the word choice is so unusual that it would be considered by most readers to be a mistake.
Consider the text on the right that appeared in El País last week. It is part of an article about the notorious Coldplay kiss cam incident, which led to two executives losing their jobs. In this short fragment, to my eye, there are two glaring errors:
- sus nombres han sido ya removidos de la página web
- ha convertido la empresa en “un nombre familiar“
I hazard a guess that these texts were mistranslated from an English original containing “have already been removed” and “household name”. Sure enough, the El País article acknowledges syndication from EFE, New York.
So who was responsible for the flawed translation? EFE or El País?
Without privileged access to EFE copy or the El País newsroom there is no sure way of knowing. But the fact that it happened at all at this juncture is surprising, to say the least.
Some years ago this kind of translation gaffe was not at all uncommon but these days GenAI platforms (integrated into translation platforms) can avoid, detect or correct such errors as a matter of course.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that tolerance for poor translations has increased in recent years, particularly due to the widespread use of machine translation (and the sheer volume of translated text in circulation). In low-stakes contexts, such as travel and social media, users have become accustomed to inaccuracies. There seems to be a trade-off between quality and availability/speed.
But in high-stakes contexts, particularly in print, users still expect quality translations. Today’s newspapers fall into both categories, it seems. We can still buy newspapers on paper (but for how long?). But nowadays all newspapers also have an online version, which is often more complete than the printed version. And some newspapers exist only online, such as Vilaweb and elDiario.es in Spain.
Do online newspapers contain more language errors than on-paper newspapers? Maybe we should find out. But not until after the summer holidays!
