>> “South study walking” is not an official position, before the Qing era this is just a “messenger,” generally by the then imperial intellectuals Hanlin to serve as. South study in the Hanlin officials in the “select chencai only goods and excellent” into the value, called “South study walking.” Because of the close to the emperor, the emperor’s decision to have a certain influence. Yongzheng later set up “military aircraft,” the Minister of the military machine, full-time, although the study is still Hanlin into the value, but has no participation in government affairs. Scholars in the Qing Dynasty into the value of the South study proud. Many scholars and scholars in the early Qing Dynasty into the south through the study.

> Is this actually in English? Of course we all agree that it’s made of English words (for the most part, anyway), but does that imply that it’s a passage in English? To my mind, since the above paragraph contains no meaning, it’s not in English; it’s just a jumble made of English ingredients—a random word salad, an incoherent hodgepodge.

> In case you’re curious, here’s my version of the same passage (it took me hours)

I stopped reading here for now, to avoid having his translation affect what I am about to do.

What Hofstadter doesn't really go into is that I can still manage to extract some information from the machine translation, compared to none for the original Chinese. Not only that, interpreting machine translations itself is a skill. In a sense, instead of learning a second language, one learns to translate poorly machine translated English. Of course, one can still ask whether that's a good thing or not. Here's my attempt:

> “South study walking” is not an official position, before the Qing era this is just a “messenger,” generally by the then imperial intellectuals Hanlin to serve as.

“South study walking” is GT's best attempt at labelling an unofficial position taken by intellectuals, comparable to being a messenger for the emperor.

> South study in the Hanlin officials in the “select chencai only goods and excellent” into the value, called “South study walking.”

It was a position only available to highly-qualified <Hanlin officials>. Quick google search for "Hanlin": The Hanlin Academy (Chinese: 翰林院; pinyin: Hànlín Yuàn; literally: "Brush Wood Court"; Manchu: bithei yamun) was an academic and administrative institution founded in the eighth-century Tang China by Emperor Xuanzong in Chang'an. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlin_Academy

.. so people from Hanlin academy, suggesting the position was administrative in nature.

> Because of the close to the emperor, the emperor’s decision to have a certain influence.

The position was close to the emperor, giving those who held it some influence over him.

> Yongzheng later set up “military aircraft,” the Minister of the military machine, full-time, although the study is still Hanlin into the value, but has no participation in government affairs.

"Study is still Hanlin" is likely referring to the “South study walking” position, since we established the connection to Hanlin earlier. With that, this reads as: Yongzheng set up a ministry of defence, which meant the position was excluded from direct government affairs, although there was still value in having the position.

> Scholars in the Qing Dynasty into the value of the South study proud. Many scholars and scholars in the early Qing Dynasty into the south through the study.

Many scholars in the Qing Dynasty have taken the position of "south study walking", and it was a prestigious position.

I'm sure this is terrible, full of errors, and even the information I correctly inferred undoubtedly misses a lot of nuance, but again: it gives some sense of the information the original passage contains.

So here is Hofstadter's translation.

>> The nan-shufang-xingzou (“South Study special aide”) was not an official position, but in the early Qing Dynasty it was a special role generally filled by whoever was the emperor’s current intellectual academician. The group of academicians who worked in the imperial palace’s south study would choose, among themselves, someone of great talent and good character to serve as ghostwriter for the emperor, and always to be at the emperor’s beck and call; that is why this role was called “South Study special aide.” The South Study aide, being so close to the emperor, was clearly in a position to influence the latter’s policy decisions. However, after Emperor Yongzheng established an official military ministry with a minister and various lower positions, the South Study aide, despite still being in the service of the emperor, no longer played a major role in governmental decision-making. Nonetheless, Qing Dynasty scholars were eager for the glory of working in the emperor’s south study, and during the early part of that dynasty, quite a few famous scholars served the emperor as South Study special aides.

Well, that definitely reads a lot better, but I wasn't that far off in terms of meaning of the text. And it didn't take me hours (writing this comment took a long time though).

I absolutely agree that human translation by experts is an art, that it produces much, much better results, and that we should not let it be devalued. But the value in getting a quick impression, even if flawed, through machine translation should not be undervalued either. It has a very different application. On social platforms, for example, it is the difference between being completely out of the loop of a conversation or still somewhat following it and being able to ask a question for clarification in a shared language.