SLOP8217 / POSTGRADUATE / SEMESTER 1 2027

Wrong in Public

A mistranslation is not a failure to be corrected. It is the only visible seam in a system that is otherwise invisible. Twelve weeks reconstructing the machines that made the errors we read in public.

Inspect the first case →

12Weeks

12Benches

7Recorded specimens

4Assessments

translation / forensics / evidence

One error, four operations

  1. Inspect

    Record what was printed.

  2. Trace

    Establish where it came from.

  3. Reconstruct

    Model the process that produced it.

  4. Argue

    Make a claim specific enough to be wrong.

Three of the seven

Every artefact on this site is recorded with where it came from, when, and how far the record can be trusted. These three are the shape of the corpus: a workflow, a dictionary, and a word in a room where being wrong mattered. Select a record to open its case file.

I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.

The Swansea road signprimary

Provenance
Reported by BBC News, with a photograph of the installed sign · 2008-10
Verification
Recorded from the artefact, or from a report that reproduces it.
Mechanism
A workflow with no translator in it; an inbox mistaken for a translation service The English was emailed away for translation and the reply that came back was printed on the sign. The Welsh half says the translator is out of the office. No translation system was involved at any point.

Open case file

Fuck the duck until exploded

The merged charactersecondary

Provenance
Photographs of Chinese restaurant menus, widely reproduced online; original provenance unestablished · 2007
Verification
Reported by others. This course has not seen the artefact itself.
Mechanism
Character merger under simplification, then sense selection by corpus frequency Simplification merged two characters into one. A lookup then chose between that character's senses by which was commoner, and a restaurant printed the answer on its menu.

Open case file

intoxicado → intoxicated

Intoxicadosecondary

Provenance
Reported in medical-interpreting literature and press coverage; this course has not consulted the court record · 1980
Verification
Reported by others. This course has not seen the artefact itself.
Mechanism
A false friend, in a setting with no interpreter and no time One Spanish word was read as the English word it resembles, in a room with no interpreter and no time.

Open case file

Seven specimens are on record here. One has a photograph of the artefact itself. Four were reported and reproduced without one. Two are probably not true at all, and establishing that is the work rather than a failure of it.

What you will be able to do

  1. By week twelve you can record an artefact so that a stranger can re-check it, and say plainly when you cannot source one. That is what the specimen log is marked on.

    20% · Specimen log · Weeks 1, 6, 11

  2. You can argue from one error back to the process that produced it, specifically enough to be wrong. That is the reconstruction.

    35% · The reconstruction · Weeks 4, 7

  3. You can put a corpus in front of someone who was not in the room and document what you left out of it. That is the exhibit.

    30% · The exhibit · Weeks 9, 12

  4. The fourth mark is the room itself, and it is the one you cannot do alone.

    15% · Bench contribution · Week 12

What you will do

Every week you bring one artefact — a menu, a sign, a subtitle, a manual — that claims to say something in a language it does not speak. You record where it came from and when. Then you work backwards from the error to the process that produced it: a dictionary entry, a grammar rule, a phrase table, a network, or a workflow that could not tell a translation request from an email.

The semester

Twelve teaching weeks: lecture, bench and assessment due dates.
WeekLectureBenchDue
1What makes it wrongFirst specimenestablishing the claim
2The dictionary as suspectReconstruct the entryreconstructing the entry
3Rules, and a story we cannot sourceTrace it backtracing it to the source
4Statistics, and the fluent joinFind the seamlocating the join
5The network, and the confident wrong answerStarve itprobing a closed system
6No lectureField weekcollecting
Mid-semester break
7Signage and the stateRead the standard against the signreading one against the other

The reconstruction

8The volunteer, and the seam left inAnnotate, then removeannotating, then stripping
9Where it costsWhat stays out of the exhibitexcluding
10The round trip as an instrumentRound tripchaining to a fixed point
11The seam closesTry the method on something fluentreconstructing, and failing

Specimen log

12No lectureThe exhibitexhibiting

The exhibit

Bench contribution

The corpus in time

Timeline of the corpusA timeline of the corpus from 1960 to 2016, one mark per specimen by verification level: The vodka is good but the meat is rotten (1960, apocryphal); The Chevrolet Nova (1970, apocryphal); Intoxicado (1980, secondary); The dried goods aisle (2007, secondary); The merged character (2007, secondary); The Swansea road sign (2008, primary); 出口 / EXPORT (2010, secondary). One marked line at 2016, labelled "The network, and the confident wrong answer".201619602010The vodka is good but the meat is rotten, 1960, apocryphalThe Chevrolet Nova, 1970, apocryphalIntoxicado, 1980, secondaryThe dried goods aisle, 2007, secondaryThe merged character, 2007, secondaryThe Swansea road sign, 2008, primary出口 / EXPORT, 2010, secondaryTimeline of the corpusA timeline of the corpus from 1960 to 2016, one mark per specimen by verification level: The vodka is good but the meat is rotten (1960, apocryphal); The Chevrolet Nova (1970, apocryphal); Intoxicado (1980, secondary); The dried goods aisle (2007, secondary); The merged character (2007, secondary); The Swansea road sign (2008, primary); 出口 / EXPORT (2010, secondary). One marked line at 2016, labelled "The network, and the confident wrong answer".201619602010The vodka is good but the meat is rotten, 1960, apocryphalThe Chevrolet Nova, 1970, apocryphalIntoxicado, 1980, secondaryThe dried goods aisle, 2007, secondaryThe merged character, 2007, secondaryThe Swansea road sign, 2008, primary出口 / EXPORT, 2010, secondary

7 specimens, 1960–2010. The marked line is 2016, where week 5's lecture — The network, and the confident wrong answer — puts the change. Nothing in this corpus is more recent than the change week 5 describes. That is the finding, not a gap in the collection.

Who it is for

Postgraduate students who read a second language well enough to tell a bad translation from an unfamiliar one. You do not need to build translation systems and you will not be asked to. You do need to be willing to say I cannot source this in front of other people.

What this course does not do

It does not teach you to translate. It does not rank languages by difficulty. It does not treat a mistranslation as a joke about the person who made it: the machine is the subject, not the speaker.