The Translation Chain Project

The Translation Chain Project grew out of a question: what would happen if a short, poetic piece of prose were translated again and again, with the previous translation always used as the basis for the next translation? It certainly sounds like a set-up for the kind of distortion you might find in a game of telephone. However, with seven accomplished translators working with English, Mi'kmaw, German, French, Italian, and Scottish Gaelic, the project showed how human minds can keep a text alive and well. But then came a second question: how would machine translation do by comparison?

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