Secretary of State site had translation errors

OLYMPIA — Debbie Hsu says something was lost in translation when Washington residents who speak Chinese tried to view the Secretary of State's Web site in their native language.

The Web site lets visitors view the site in different languages, but the Chinese translation was apparently way off. For example, a statement about Secretary of State Sam Reed proposing "statewide mandates to restore public trust" was translated as "Swampy weed suggests whole state order recover open trust," according to Hsu and others in the Section 203 Voting Rights Coalition.

The group's name refers to a section of the federal Voting Rights Act that requires equal access to election material for certain groups.

The Seattle group complained to Reed's office, saying better translations are needed for voters with limited English.

Reed's office yanked Chinese translations from the Web site Jan. 12. Korean translations that had similar problems were pulled yesterday.

It's not clear when or whether they will be available again.

"It's not a perfect system. It does the best it can," said Matthew Edwards, webmaster for the Secretary of State's Office. "We pulled it [the translation options] because of the complaints. If it's totally confusing, it's worthless."

The office pays a California company, Systran, about $6,000 a year for use of translation software that takes the English version and currently allows people to view it in Russian, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Edwards said he will talk to the company about ways to improve the translations in Chinese and Korean.

Systran President Denis Gachot says Systran's software aims to provide people who don't speak much English "an idea of what the document or Web site is about."

Gachot said people who are "perfectly bilingual" quickly spot any errors in translation and tend to focus on the software's shortcomings. "This service is for people who don't speak very much English at all," he said.

He says the accuracy level is around 75 percent. That can be improved by tweaking the site, Gachot said, but it's tough to get accurate translations on sites with a wide variety of topics and posted information that changes often.

Format problems on the Web sites can drive down the accuracy, he said. Gachot said the Secretary of State's Office could consider manually translating the most frequently visited Web pages and use the software for pages visited less frequently.

Hsu said it's important for Reed's office to have accurate translations. The poor translations on the site were insulting to some people, she said.

"It's critical that all the information that's being offered is accessible to folks who want to know what's going on, especially when it relates to election materials and voting. It's even more critical that they are offering correct information," she said.

"We've run into a lot of folks who are bilingual, so although they might be able to vote and read and write in English they still prefer information in their native language. It just has to do with the complication of some of the measures and things we're voting on."

Hsu said her group wants to work with Reed's office to improve and restore the service. In the meantime, she said, "having no translation is better than having very bad translation."

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882 or agarber@seattletimes.com