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Google translate, a possible revolution.

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34 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5  Next >>
Thor1987
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4735 days ago
65 posts - 84 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 17 of 34
08 March 2013 at 1:52pm | IP Logged 
vonPeterhof wrote:
internet/">Here's a humorous article about word usage on the Internet, with some
interesting insights on "meh" in the second entry (sixth in the countdown).

In addition to the doubts expressed by others, I'd like to additionally stress how
unreliable GT's speech synthesiser is for Japanese in particular. Due to the nature of
the Japanese writing system the same character can be read in several wildly different
ways. With common words this isn't even an issue, but if you put in sentences with some
advanced vocabulary things may get wonky, like the numerous times I had where the
transliteration below gave one reading and the speech synthesizer gave a completely
different one. Sometimes one of them is so hilariously off that you know which one to
go with, but often the two readings are perfectly legit words, so you're left wondering
which one of them fits the context better, or if they are indeed interchangeable. And
when it gets to personal names all bets are off.


Meh you'd be surprised at the rate it's improving. I've seen improvement in google
translate in just the last few months. Obviously a free service isn't gonna be perfect
for every language. Asian languages are the hardest to work with and have the lowest
value in economic terms.

Again I still don't understand the reaction many are having to this, it's still one of
the better free services out there. Translation tech will likely never be perfect, but
I still think it's rather useful for those of us, who can't imagine jumping into
japense.


1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7157 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 18 of 34
08 March 2013 at 6:34pm | IP Logged 
Thor1987 wrote:
vonPeterhof wrote:
internet/">Here's a humorous article about word usage on the Internet, with some
interesting insights on "meh" in the second entry (sixth in the countdown).

In addition to the doubts expressed by others, I'd like to additionally stress how
unreliable GT's speech synthesiser is for Japanese in particular. Due to the nature of
the Japanese writing system the same character can be read in several wildly different
ways. With common words this isn't even an issue, but if you put in sentences with some
advanced vocabulary things may get wonky, like the numerous times I had where the
transliteration below gave one reading and the speech synthesizer gave a completely
different one. Sometimes one of them is so hilariously off that you know which one to
go with, but often the two readings are perfectly legit words, so you're left wondering
which one of them fits the context better, or if they are indeed interchangeable. And
when it gets to personal names all bets are off.


Meh you'd be surprised at the rate it's improving. I've seen improvement in google
translate in just the last few months. Obviously a free service isn't gonna be perfect
for every language. Asian languages are the hardest to work with and have the lowest
value in economic terms.


With all due respect, you seem to have a different definition of improvement compared to many of us.

Thor1987 wrote:
Again I still don't understand the reaction many are having to this, it's still one of the better free services out there. Translation tech will likely never be perfect, but I still think it's rather useful for those of us, who can't imagine jumping into japense.


And some of us don't understand the boosting for Google Translate in learning a language. Calling the emergence of Google Translate as a possible revolution comes off as hype, and as several of us have demonstrated, its value is far from what your comments suggest (esepcially the synthesizing component). Whatever "revolutionary" value it bears pales in comparison to the "revolution" (if we want to stick with bombast) that has happened in learning foreign languages because of the internet. Think of the proliferation of online courses such as Lernu, and Slovake.eu, in addition to supplementary material such as Supisuomea and Oahpa!, and all of the archives of material that's difficult or financially burdensome to obtain in their original form (e.g. CeLTIE, audio for "Beginning Polish").

I don't know about you, but it defeats the process of learning when the learner tries to look for a shortcut in a machine translation only to get an unidiomatic or ungrammatical result combined with a blatantly non-native representation of the language's prosody. You tell me if it's worthwhile for an ESL student to model his/her pronunciation and train his/her ear with Google Translate (never mind as a model for grammar), let alone in a language that is unsuited to translation with Google's approach that uses statistical analysis, and stuck with an egregiously primitive synthesizer or even translates between two languages using a third language such as English to Macedonian.
7 persons have voted this message useful



Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6904 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes 
5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 19 of 34
08 March 2013 at 8:37pm | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
Any ideas on a decent speech synthesizer? I've been looking for one.


Try Ivona, although the number of languages is still quite limited.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6598 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 20 of 34
08 March 2013 at 9:30pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
Meh indeed has that somewhat dismissive/contemptuous attitude, but with an occasionally joking undertone.

I also interpreted it as that interjection rather than a mispelling of the 1st person singular in its oblique form.


Thor1987 wrote:
meh I think once you play with it a bit you figure out how to get around any errors. In fact this aspect is an exercise in its self.

Anyhow sorry for not being clear, but the real benefit of it from my perspective is
having that spoken element, being able to hear a language, while your doing a written study.
Meh, of course I know meh! :D
I meant the ones in bold. Of course we know what the OP meant but would googletranslate understand?

Edited by Serpent on 08 March 2013 at 9:36pm
2 persons have voted this message useful



lingoleng
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5299 days ago
605 posts - 1290 votes 

 
 Message 21 of 34
08 March 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Of course we know what the OP meant but would googletranslate understand?

Maybe. That is the miraculous essence of what is well known as the Google paradox: Only a faulty source text can result in a correct translation. Can. Sometimes. Thx, Google.

1 person has voted this message useful



Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5784 days ago
781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 22 of 34
09 March 2013 at 12:07am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Meh, of course I know meh! :D
I meant the ones in bold. Of course we know what the OP meant but would googletranslate
understand?


Oh, I see. I missed it because "you're" is a verb phrase not a pronoun; but you meant
that he had incorrectly substituted the pronoun "your" for "you're". What happened was
that when you said "learn the English pronouns" I was checking his/her pronouns and
didn't see anything wrong: I missed "your" because my brain automatically parsed it as
a (misspelled) verb phrase in that context. I guess that's actually a disadvantage of
being a native speaker. Long story short: your right of course ;-) (sorry, couldn't
resist).

You are, of course, also spot on about "its self". Didn't spot that one at all.


Oh and @OP: sorry for taking the thread off topic.

Edited by Random review on 09 March 2013 at 12:13am
1 person has voted this message useful



Thor1987
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4735 days ago
65 posts - 84 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 23 of 34
09 March 2013 at 12:11pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Chung wrote:
term=meh">Meh indeed has that somewhat dismissive/contemptuous attitude,
but with an occasionally joking undertone.

I also interpreted it as that interjection rather than a mispelling of the 1st person
singular in its oblique form.


Thor1987 wrote:
meh I think once you play with it a bit you figure out how to get
around any errors. In fact this aspect is an exercise in its self.

Anyhow sorry for not being clear, but the real benefit of it from my perspective is
having that spoken element, being able to hear a language, while your doing a
written study.
Meh, of course I know meh! :D
I meant the ones in bold. Of course we know what the OP meant but would googletranslate
understand?
Lolz EDIT: I mean Laugh out loud in the plural form.

I'll never understand the fixation will completely archaic spellings.

The reason they call it proper English is because if they tried calling it
correct English the world would melt.

Anyhows I haven't seen many alternatives, Acapela box is ok, but apparently you only
have access to a demo.



Edited by Thor1987 on 09 March 2013 at 12:12pm
1 person has voted this message useful



tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4666 days ago
1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 24 of 34
09 March 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
let alone in a language that is unsuited to translation with Google's approach that uses statistical analysis, and stuck with an egregiously primitive synthesizer or even translates between two languages using a third language such as English to Macedonian.

Hahahaha, that audio is hilariously bad. I wouldn't know where to begin trying to imitate that.


3 persons have voted this message useful



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