Re: CHAT: Machine translation (was Re: translation)

I won't give a word-by-word critique on the English/Spanish article Yahya
posted, but will point out some of the more egregious errors:

Right away in the title heading: "it finishes receiving..." for "acaba de
recibir" = 'he has just received...'

As with many of the 3d pers. verbs like the above with subject "it", the
frequent mistrans. of possessive su(s) as 'its', when it almost always, very
clearly, should be "his".

"The School of Beautiful Arts"-- oh, come on.

I can see how the "al + infinitive" construction could cause confusion, but
it's something one learns in Year 1 Spanish, and is very common.  The entire
sentence beginning "Al estallar la guerra..."= "When exploding the war..."
is such a hash that I doubt someone unfamiliar with Span. would make any
sense out of it. "pain that was exchanged" for "sentence that was
commuted..." etc. etc.
"in he himself year..." for "en el mismo año"-- come on, again, groan.

One of the more amusing boo-boos is where he goes to foreign cities "to give
lectures, _to char them_..." EH??? At first I thought it was a misprint for
"to chair them", but of course it's "dar conferencias, _charlas_..." (lit.
CHATS) i.e. TALKS, dammit. Worthy of one of our relays!!!!

Oh well, basta... At least it got me interested in him-- sorry to say I'm
not up on 20th Cent. Spanish dramatists.