There have been bigger news developments reported in this weblog, and the following is probably not the first such incident recorded. Still, it's a sign of how far automatic translation has come since the days of
universal ridicule.
The question is: What do you do when you want to link to a website written in a language your own readers cannot be expected to understand? Like when
dagbladet.no, a mainstream news website in Norway, wants to link to an Italian story about the
Catholic Church and the book
The Da Vinci Code?
Well, you may choose to do as dagbladet.no and not link to the
original story from zenit.org, but rather use a
Google translation link. The English text you get is one that can be understood, but is it good enough to serve as an editorial link? When
The Da Vinci Code is translated into "The Code From You Win"?
I suppose we all use translators for both personal and professional needs, but should we rely on them to make editorial sense? I guess it depends on whether you view links as recommendations, which, incidentally, Google does. But I notice that
The Guardian, for one,
doesn't carry the translation link.
