The above is an illustration put forward by Sperber and Wilson as an example of cognitive capabilities of human beings. From this example, we can see that one resorts to his physical surroundings, working memory and knowledge of the word to clarify the ambiguity caused by homonymy. Therefore, it seems that computer has to be equipped with the same abilities in order to perform the job. Let’s examine the translation of one famous software “东方快车” in China.
Generally speaking, the translation software can to some extent distinguish different references of a word and pick out the correct one based upon the context. The following translation is done by “东方快车2003”.
1. The bird has interesting bills. 鸟有有趣的帐单。
2. The bill was passed. 法案被通过。
3. I was sent the wrong bill by the company. 我被公司送错误的法案。
4. I received my bill yesterday. 昨天我收到帐单。
Here the homonymy “bill” is translated within different context. Though the sentences are short, they have provided enough clues for disambiguation. Most people won’t have much difficulty in pointing out the right referential meaning of the word in these sentences. However, as we can see, computers are incapable of clear identification. The first translation does not make any sense, which may be attributed to the incomplete collection of referential meanings of “bill”. Here the word means the jaws of a bird together with their horny covering. Probably this meaning is excluded from the dictionary. The translation of the third sentence is also problematic. Most people will interpret the bill as a kind of account, rather than legal bill. This mistranslation should be attributed to a different reason, since the referential meaning of account is included in the dictionary, as illustrated in the translation of the fourth sentence. Apparently here the computer fails to identify the correct referential meaning. Let’s try another word “head”. The following translation is performed by the same software.
1. Use your head and think! 使用你的头并且想！
2. Two heads are better than one. 2个头是更好与比一个。
3. Heads, I win. 头，我赢。
4. He is at the head of class. 他在班的头。
5. He is the head of school. 他是学校的头。
6. He is the head of the English Department. 他是英语的部门的领导。
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This group of sentences contains a number of mistranslations as well. Like the word “bill”, the referential meanings of “head” are not complete, evidenced by the translation of the third sentence. The first two sentences are not translated very well, because “head” in both these two sentences refers to something intellectual instead of something physical. What is more interesting is the last two sentences, in which the word should be interpreted as “chief of an organization” both. However, with almost the same structure, the word is translated differently. Fr
