Errors resulting from MT, machine translation (traducció automàtica [ca], traducción automática [es]), based on English as an interlingua are more than just fodder for funny anecdotes. They point to the abundance of “contaminated” textual resources that undermine “a technological edifice that privileges a massive amount of data over the systematic control of its quality”. The subtle Englishing of non-English languages as a by-product of English-mediated MT reveals an English-language imperialism that goes far beyond “language wars” or the struggle between languages for discursive space. More Kafka-like, MT intrudes into its host languages, morphing and creolizing them from within.
For in-depth analyses of this phenomenon see:
- El inglés como lengua pivote: Google y el imperialismo lingüístico. By Frédéric Kaplan and Dana Kianfar. From Le Monde diplomatique (in Spanish), no. 231, January 2015
- Comment les erreurs de Google Traduction créent des “innovations linguistiques”. France Info. 18 November 2014
