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Lost in translation
In today`s technological prowess world no technology has been able to develop a machine
translator that has no flaw that can translate all languages to target languages. In his article "Lost
in translation" Budiansky issues a catchy humorous curtain raising story in dire approach to
catch the audience attention unsuspectingly as he narrates:
Eventually the scene shifts to the Old Bailey courthouse, where the prisoner at the bar
stands accused of intent to cause a breach of the peace for having published an EnglishHungarian phrase book full of spurious translations. For example, the Hungarian phrase
"Can you direct me to the railway station" is translated as "Please fondle my
buttocks."( Budiansky ,p.2).
In this rhetorical quotation you get the authors intent at which he narrates and shows a flaw in a
translation reference book whose inventor falls to the demise of its flaws and shortcomings after
it is found to be of peace disturbance. As an audience it hits home at just how critical translation
can be to your life. Budiansky uses this article to put forth his outcry of the challenges MT
software and book translations have come of age but are still wanting due to grammatical
accounts and direct system translation glitches. He goes to target computer programmers and the
like stakeholders as to how they fail to connect the dots in producing a valid machine translator
deep in the article. The author builds ethos as a credible writer by demonstrating his credibility
and expertise devotion of introspect on trace of inconsistency. He goes to establish his logos by

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presenting the audience with logical arguments choices and conclusions and finally through
developing his pathos through the use of dramatic and humorous appeal in order to invoke to the
audiences emotions to give perspective. The analysis has subsections as; rhetorical sources,
illustrations, statistic and humorous reference from Budiansky`s article. Connecting all these
approaches should eventually bring a precise picture of how these techniques have come to work
in his quest to illustrate the need for an accurate translation system.
Rhetorical choices 1 (expert sources):With the most elaborate expert source in the article he uses
Norbert Weiner, a proclaimed mathematician from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
who states that computers were used during the war to help break enemy codes; decoding is a
matter of transforming a set of symbols; language translation could be the same (Budiansky,
p.11). Here you get to see the author`s intent to surface out the naivety of Norbert Weiner who
believes language translation is as precise as computer coding of decoding codes. Clearly not
regarding considering how word order changes upon the translation. Budiansky uses him as
measuring angle as to why he proves an MT does not satiate or complete an elaborate translation
to a logical meaning.
Rhetorical choice 2(illustration): The author delves deeper into illustration as he intends to
refute the accuracy argument by systematically acknowledging each illustration and then using
logic to discredit them. He introduces further illustrations often overlooked, with an intention to
remind the audience of the importance of MT accuracy. He effectively convinces the audience
that a simple machine translator does not adequately cover all the glitches that arise from
translation transfer. To bolster the credibility of his claims he uses ethos and logos to somewhat
gain the audience consensus of his realms of perception and reason as he quotes. When faced

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with criticism of their products' translations, MT vendors tend to invoke the "talking dog" -- as
in, Don't be picky; it's amazing that a dog can talk at all.(Budiansky,p.5).
Here he tries to show at just how the machine translator of `Babelfish fails to live up to its
users expectation to bring credibility and trustworthiness to the audience by showing how MT
builders invoke a slap on their wrist sort of appeal to glitches they assume are just mere. In a
twist of mood again you sense he goes out again to pat on the back Babelfish to portray an
intrinsic etho to the audience to create goodwill to the audience and acknowledge a few fairness
by showing his fascination at how the MT come through in shortening of sentences when
translating from English to French that weeds out unnecessary words reducing texts as
communicated Babelfish botched Groucho Marx's punch line "What an elephant was doing in
my pajamas, I'll never know" by translating the first three words as "Quel
elephant,"(Budiansky,p.16).This gives the audience the notion that despite his dissatisfaction
with MT`s he nonetheless recognizes one if not a few thumbs up despite the complexities of
these MT`s. On another illustration he talks about a parse tree in his article.Once the sentence is
parsed, the resulting syntax tree is transferred to the target language with the aid of a second
set of rules governing grammatical combinations in that language. (Budiansky,p.14).
He builds up a logo to the audience as he defends this improvement by expressing how it
has remedied the direct system naivety. In this explanation of the weaknesses that found a
solution his argument creates an opportunity to logically appeal to the audiences inductive
reasoning. He goes on to further invoke the audience logic reason as he quotes , In other words,
semantics is the key to MT, and semantics is a matter of a lot more than linguistics -- it requires
real-world knowledge. Indeed, one can get near-perfect translations with just about any system
by limiting its lexicon to a narrow, specialized area in which there is no semantic ambiguity.

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(Budiansky,p.24).Here you can see he shows his etho by acknowledging the credibility that a
semantic approach holds while reinforcing his authority to engage with the field of thought in
sort of an active voice .He quotes, The holy grail for many people in machine translation is to
use a tree like this to reduce any sentence to a pure description of meaning in an "interlingua."
This can then be reassembled into a sentence in any language using a grammar-driven generator
peculiar to that target language.[B]ut no one seems to be holding his
breath(Budiansky,p.25).You can see he tries to appeal this line of thought as a consensus reason
to the audience that he believes has already thought this out. He shows the audience that an
approach can be formulated for better accuracy but he does not bank on it and knows it will still
remain a problem.
Rhetorical choice 3 ( statistic):Budiansky tries to elaborate his logos and ethos further into the
article as he quotes The komodo-dragon sentence, for example, required a substantial amount
of word rearrangement to come out in even passable French. To say "the world's largest living
lizard" in French, one says literally "[the most big] lizard living in the world": the sequence
ABCD becomes BDCA -- a 75 percent rearrangement.(Budiansky, p.15).He shows the audience
in a more etho expertise angle and in quintessential devotion way as he fuses a flow of innocuous
data to further convince the audience. This gives the audience a complexity of just how hard it is
to achieve an accurate MT. You can see his expertise is of scholarly and credited prowess in the
elaboration of rhetoric from his references and quotations.
Rhetoric choice(humorous reference):As Budiansky agrees in the beginning of his article that the
two MT`s "Systran Bablefish" and "Globalink Comprende" fall rather satisfactory despite their
few glitches he points out that they can be molded to be better. The gives the audience a
humorous rhetoric reference when he goes to quote Particularly fetching was the tendency of

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both Babelfish and Comprende to finish English-to-French round trips having picked up a
diction vaguely reminiscent of "Inspecteur Clouseau's": "Where is the room of the men?" "Do
you like to return to my hotel?" All that was missing was an occasional substitution of "zee" for
"the."
Budiansky builds up a humorous patho to the audience by trying to appeal to them as he
reference a character he is familiar with in relation to the MT`s. Due to his reference of language
culture and orientation the audience identifies with his point of view and they become aware of
the urgency associated with this action. He then goes to further to personify his humour as he
reference how Systran Bablefish and Globalink Comprende poses a stolid Germanic pedantry
nature as he says Pepsi-Cola strikes the point. He sort of invokes a teasing appeal to his
reference with his notion of German culture and his experience. In the introduction of the article
he invokes a patho ambience to the audience as he narrates a scene about the tourist who uses a
translation reference and commits a comical glitch In one famous episode in the British comedy
series Monty Python a foreign-looking tourist clad in an outmoded leather trenchcoat appears at
the entrance to a London shop. He marches up to the man behind the counter, solemnly consults
a phrase book, and in a thick Middle European accent declares, "My hovercraft ... is full of
eels!"(Budiansky,p.1).You can see the ingenuity that is embedded in this approach as it lures the
audience at first instance and lives a suspense which makes the audience want to go further into
the article to access the author`s catch and agenda. The audience gets appealed by the authors
quest for accuracy in MT`s that is the exigent event that led to this particular discourse in his
well crafted humor.
Conclusion: Through the effective use of rhetorical tools and the mindfull arrangement of this
essay, he uses his expertise in the art of rhetoric by focusing his entry using humor appealing to

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the audience that manages to build a rhetoric focus on MT accuracy and establishing his
authority. He establishes his credibility and portrays his scholarly credit through his citations of
literature and quotations from his expertise. He then concentrates on logically appealing to the
audience throughout the body of his essay. By displaying the weaknesses of the deductive
reasoning that makes up the incompetent accuracy of MT`s and translators. He is able to build
his inductive argument. In Addition, he presents the audience with an insight in how technology
and translators can merge to optimize translation enabling the audience to make a logical
conclusions by statistic quotation he references. He lives a lasting impression on the audience
with the reminder that in the words of Babelfish: "If you cannot strike it, connect
them."(Budiansky,p.29).
References
Budiansky, D.(nd). Lost in translation.