My name is Pirkko, I’m a 77-year-old woman, and I admit to being a super fan. There are 2 athletes I follow avidly: tennis player Rafael Nadal and biathlete Martin Fourcade (and also, on the side, Fourcade’s biathlete younger brother Simon)

I’m one of those crazy sports fans, the kind of person who gets a tennis channel and watches it. A lot. But I like to do more than just watch the sports, I want to learn about the athletes themselves. Knowing them better and knowing something personal about them – that gives some depth to the whole experience of being a sports fan.

If I were limited to what they write about these guys in the press here in Finland, well, I wouldn’t know much. So I go online to read up on them. I am Facebook friends with both Nadal and Fourcade and both write something almost every day. I like reading those and I enjoy the pictures too – it puts me into a good mood. I feel like it opens up my world.

Since I don’t know any Spanish or French, only a bit of English, I rely entirely on the translations provided by Facebook. No, the translations are not perfect, but I understand that they’re not going to be. The thing is, I know the fields and I know the people involved, so if something is unclear I can make a good guess at what it’s supposed to mean. For example, take the words judge and play. Sometimes the machine gets those wrong, placing judge in a courtroom and play in a music lesson. But we’re talking tennis here, so I know that the real meanings have to do with referees and tennis rackets.

Both Fourcade and Nadal also tend to write messages both in their own language and English, and Facebook gives me translations for both:

It’s helpful to have 2 translations. I always look at both translations and put together the meaning from their combination. The translation from English is almost always better than the one from French or Spanish, but I’m looking at an example right now where the translation from French is better. IMHO the translations on Fourcade’s page tend to be better than the ones on Nadal’s, but it could simply be that Fourcade writes more clearly.

When there is a word or post I don’t understand, I sometimes type it into Google Translate. I also have a dictionary, I suppose I should use that more often too (chuckle). If there is a handy child or grandchild around, I might ask them for help, but I don’t go calling my kids to ask. The stuff I am translating is not that important.

Thoughts on machine translation

I found this translation thing pretty much right away when I joined Facebook, so I’ve been using it for more than 10 years now. My friends don’t use it and I don’t really go recommending it to people. I’m old enough that my friends are really not technical – I don’t think I’d have anyone to recommend it to!

I’m really satisfied that there is a tool like this for those of us who don’t know languages. Computers have brought both bad and good things to our lives, mostly good in my opinion, and machine translation is a nice addition to that. Without it, I don’t think I’d follow the athletes as much. Being able to go further and learn about the personal lives and histories of the athletes I follow – it brings openness to my world.