Nika Kartvelishvili
Original Text: Se mantuvo en Moscú en el invierno de 1941, cuando los alemanes amenazaban la ciudad (42 km), y organizó allí un contraataque soviético. Al año siguiente, 1942, tuvo éxito al mantener la estratégica ciudad de Stalingrado, última defensa de la zona petrolera del Cáucaso, pese a la enorme cantidad de bajas entre sus hombres (Stalin, a través de sus comisarios políticos, ordenó disparar contra sus propios soldados si estos se retiraban de un combate al considerarlos desertores) y posteriormente (1943) también derrotó al ejército alemán en la batalla de Kursk con lo que todo el curso de las acciones militares tuvo un cambio, siendo ahora los soviéticos los que obligaban a retirarse a los alemanes. Así, en mayo de 1945, las fuerzas de Stalin fueron las primeras en entrar a Berlín, forzando el suicidio de Hitler y la capitulación alemana.
My own translation: He remained in Moscow in the winter of 1941, when the Germans were threatening the city (only 42 km away), and organized a Soviet counterattack there. The following year, in 1942, he successfully defended the strategic city of Stalingrad, the last shield of the Caucasus’ petroleum zone, but suffered huge losses (Stalin, through his political commissionaires, ordered to shoot down his own troops if they were to retreat, considering this an act of desertion) and later (in 1943) he defeated the German army in the battle of Kursk. This served as the turning point of the war, since from then on it was the Soviets that were forcing the Germans into retreat. In May of 1945, Stalin’s forces were the first to enter Berlin, leading to Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s surrender.
Google Translate: He remained in Moscow in the winter of 1941, when the Germans threatened the city (42 km), and organized there a Soviet counterattack. The following year, 1942, he succeeded in maintaining the strategic city of Stalingrad, last defense of the oil Caucasus, despite the huge number of casualties among his men (Stalin, through their political commissars, ordered to fire on their own if these soldiers retreating from a fight when considered deserters) and later (1943) also defeated the German army in the Battle of Kursk whereby the entire course of military action was a change, the Soviets now being forced to retire the Germans. Thus, in May 1945, Stalin’s forces were the first to enter Berlin, forcing the suicide of Hitler and the German capitulation.
As you can see, the Google Translation is quite reasonable but probably inferior to mine (which I believe is far from perfect). Firstly, it translated “amenazaban” as “threatened” instead of “were threatening”, which I believe would be a more accurate translation. Not only does the suffix -aban denote past actions in progress, but in this case it is especially important to treat it as such, since the sense of the sentence is that Stalin stayed in Moscow when the Nazis were threatening it. Google Translate also failed to “realize” that it would make more sense to insert the word “in” in front of the year 1942 instead of simply copying it from the original text. In addition, describing Stalingrad as the “last defense of the oil Caucasus” is a bit awkward. I figured that using the word “shield” when referring to the city of Stalingrad would be more accurate because ‘defense’ is rarely used to refer to a city. Also, the original text specifically mentions the petroleum zone of the Caucasus, while Google Translate simply states “oil Caucasus,” which is both awkward and inaccurate since not all of the Caucasus is an oil zone.
As you can probably see, Google’s translation of Stalin’s order to shoot his troops is completely distorted. It translated ‘sus’ as ‘their’ while the original seems to refer to ‘his’ (Stalin’s) political commissionaires. The rest of the sentence totally misses the mark since the original talks about Stalin ordering to fire at his own soldiers if they were to retreat, which he labeled as ‘desertion.’ Google also inaccurately translated the part that talks about the Battle of Kursk being the turning point of the war. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘whereby the entire course of military action saw a change’ instead of ‘…was a change’. It was also the Soviets that were forcing the Germans into retreat, not ‘Soviets being forced to retire (?) the Germans.’
There are many reasons while Google’s translation is far from perfect. One of them is its reliance on past translations all over the Web, which might have been accurate in their contexts but prove inadequate in the present one. This is probably why it translated ‘amenazaban’ as ‘threatened’ instead of ‘were threatening.’ Another reason is that Google Translate is a machine, not a human, and thus it was hard for it to ‘understand’ that the year 1942 needs an ‘in’ in front of it in the American translation. Finally, the rest of its mistakes can be attributed to the fact that when Google Translate doesn’t find a translated phrase that fully matches the current one, it translates the phrase word for word, relying on previous translations of the words or bits of the phrase. This often leads to problems since the phrase needs to be understood in its entirely in order to be translated accurately, and not simply broken down into bits. Google also doesn’t know the context of the phrase, which sometimes makes its literal translations even more inappropriate. The awkward translation “Stalin, through their political commissars, ordered to fire on their own if these soldiers retreating from a fight when considered deserters” is evidence of this. However, given the complexity of the original phrase and the fact that I myself struggled to translate it “smoothly,” I do not blame Google Translate for failing to do so and overall I am actually impressed by its reasonable translation of the original text!