The Republic of Tatarstan has a simple but inspiring slogan: “we can!” I discovered this while doing a recent Russian to English translation. The text dealt with the inauguration of Tatarstan’s newest president. In the Tatar language, “we can” is “без булдырабыз,” and this phrase rang out that day in the Kazan Kremlin. Tatar is a Turkic language, not genetically related to Russian, the language in which my text was overwhelmingly composed. Nonetheless, the MT program interpreted this slogan as a Russian phrase, and rendered it in English as: “without bullholes!”
I was thrown by this – what is a bullhole? Is that even a word? The only reference I could find was to a swimming hole located in North Carolina. Back in the real world, this is another case of MT stumbling over something it can’t handle, and making up words based on hazily understood similarities.
Consider, for instance, the way it mangles the name of Tatarstan’s outgoing president, Mintimer Sharipovich Shaimiyev. Picking up on the Russian-looking elements shar (sphere, ball) and shai (similar to shaiba, “hockey puck”), it transforms the president’s name into “Mintier Ballpovich Puck.” Since the text says that Kazan “is rightfully considered Russia’s sports capital,” this weird rendering actually makes a bit of sense.
The scene got more surreal when somebody quoted a brief verse by the Tatar poet Gabdulla Tuqay. In its original language, the poem is an unobjectionable statement about the importance of loving life and one’s country, but what the MT heard was this: “Watch the Horn, hide hulk, hide the hulk of the roof.” Inspiring rhetoric? You be the judge.
Spectators at the real event in the Kazan Kremlin saw an orderly transfer of power, replete with the congratulations, good wishes and other predictable phenomena that are characteristic of such a ceremony. But reading the MT version, one was treated to a spectacle marked by odd surrealistic flourishes, such as outlandish poetry and meaningless slogans, comical names, and provocative comments like “the presidential contradiction is in good hands” (it should be “the presidential banner”), as well as awarding the outgoing president not a “new order” for his services to the republic, but a “new orifice.”
Thus does MT take potshots at reality. There’s the real world of boring ceremonies with speeches and awards, and then there’s the world where Mr. Puck goes off to enjoy his new orifice, in a land without bullholes.