In the world of machine translation, errors are not only common, but can be dangerously absurd.
In last month's article, we told you how an automatic translation tool advertised itself with the phrase "Our specialised AI models have been trained by expert linguists to to enure the translations are the goat". If you want to find out how they messed up (but not the goat), we recommend reading that article.
Here’s today’s reminder of the chaos and comedy machine translation and AI can unleash. On 25 March, the Spanish tabloid El Mundo published a news story, copied from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, according to which an Italian tourist had been kidnapped and tortured in New York to make him give up the password to his cryptocurrency accounts and steal his money.
It’s hard to miss the implausibility of this news story, plainly machine-translated from Italian to Spanish without human oversight: we’re told that, after being stripped of his passport, the Italian man was cut into pieces, immobilised and tied to a chair, but after 15 days of torture he managed to free himself and escape – despite having been cut into pieces.
Indeed, the Italian newspaper article reads: "l'italiano ... fatto poi a pezzettini", which literally translates as "then cut into small pieces", i.e. "he was dismembered". This leads us to conclude that the Italian journalist also had the original article translated, undoubtedly from English, using AI, and did not find this nonsense strange.
However, the original English news reports indicate that "(he) sustained cuts on his legs and arms".
These types of machine translation errors cause confusion, can compromise media credibility, and have legal consequences.
As anecdotal as these situations may seem, the problem becomes far more serious when machine translations affect sectors where accuracy is non-negotiable — such as insurance, finance, law, or auditing.
In our environment, an incorrect translation can compromise the clarity of a clause, the validity of a contract, or the coverage of a policy.
In insurance, a mistranslated clause can compromise the validity of a policy, the clarity of coverage, or the enforceability of a contract. In finance, an imprecise rendering of an investment report, a prospectus, or a compliance document can mislead stakeholders, damage investor confidence, and even attract regulatory penalties. In the legal field, a single mistranslated term in a contract, court submission, or due-diligence report can alter meaning, weaken a case, or nullify an agreement. And in auditing, an inaccurate translation of a financial statement, risk assessment, or compliance finding can undermine credibility and erode client trust. The legal, financial, and reputational consequences are very real. When the peace of mind of clients depends on absolute clarity, relying on machine translations without professional review is an unacceptable gamble.
That is why, in sectors where precision is as vital as trust, the role of the human translator is neither dispensable nor replaceable.
AI can be a valuable tool — but only under the supervision of skilled professionals who can ensure that every word conveys exactly what it should, and who know when a translation would leave readers utterly lost.
We hope you enjoyed it! Don't hesitate to contact us if you're interested in any of our language services, whether translation or even language classes. You can contact us at info@hasting.es o www.hastingtraducciones.es.
