Machine Translation

Andrew Senior 2010

"Machine Translation" is an investigation into the inexactitude of translation and the corruptability of transmitted texts, particularly oral literature. "Machine Translation" takes as its starting point an English text (in each case the translation of a work that was originally orally transmitted) and repeatedly translates parts of that text into a foreign language, displaying the translation momentarily, and then back into English. Inevitably, the double translation is not the same as the original text and the document is changed, just as an oral message in the children's game "Telephone" or "Chinese Whispers" is changed.

Translations are carried out automatically using Google's machine translation API. The intermediate language is selected randomly among German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Turkish.

Click to change the text: The Odyssey Genesis The Epic of Gilgamesh The Volsunga saga