Tip 4: Minimize the use of pronouns
Pronouns are words that can replace nouns or noun phrases. Substituting a pronoun for a noun can make a text seem less repetitive, but sometimes it can lead to confusion if it is not clear which noun the pronoun is replacing. The greater the distance between the pronoun and the noun, the more challenging it can be to connect the two. In the case of automatic translation, tools tend to have difficulty connecting nouns and pronouns that appear in different sentences, even if these sentences come one right after the other.
The use of pronouns may also lead to problems when translating from a language such as English, which does not use grammatical gender, into a language such as French, which does use grammatical gender. For instance, the pronoun “it” in English must be translated into French using either the masculine form “il” or the feminine form “elle”, depending on the grammatical gender of the original noun. If it is not clear which noun is being replaced by “it”, then the automatic translation tool could assign the wrong gender to the pronoun, and the resulting text could be confusing.
| Original English text | French translation proposed by Google Translate | Comment |
| The candy dish was empty, but we were already tired of eating it. | Le plat de bonbons était vide mais nous en avions déjà marre de le manger. | The pronoun reference in the original sentence is faulty because although the writer intends “it” to refer back to “candy”, it technically refers back to “dish”. The computer is not intelligent and processes the sentence literally (choosing the pronoun “le”) instead of recognizing the intended meaning (“les” (bonbons)). |
| I knocked my favourite teacup off the countertop. I was upset when it broke. | J’ai fait tomber ma tasse à thé préférée du comptoir. J’étais bouleversé quand il s’est cassé. | Because the noun “teacup” and the pronoun “it” are in different sentences, the tool is unable to connect them. Although “teacup” is feminine, the translation tool translates “it” by the masculine pronoun “il”, which gives the impression that “il” is replacing the masculine noun “comptoir”. |
A human reader or translator can use real-world knowledge to figure out that the teacup, rather than the countertop, is broken, or that the candy, rather than the dish, was being eaten. However, an automatic translation tool is not intelligent and does not understand the text or the way that the world works. To reduce this type of problem, consider repeating the noun instead of replacing it with a pronoun.
Find out more
- The Grammarly website has a detailed overview called What are pronouns? Definitions and examples.
