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Very good translator! | ||
Tags: Software | Translation | ||
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6207 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 17 of 23 07 September 2009 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Science fiction sometimes features aliens coming to Earth and using translation machines.
I experimented with Babelfish a bit but didn't find it superior to Google. Google is not very good with Turkish, which I attribute to Turkish being a non-Indo-European language which piles suffix onto suffix. But Google seems to do Arabic to English surprisingly well and handles most European languages adequately, though it does depend on the language somewhat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6407 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 18 of 23 08 September 2009 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Again, for that to even be possible, they must themselves possess the knowledge of humans. In other words, they must themselves have intelligence. Otherwise, there is no way for them to make a correct translation, because they will be missing too much context. You have no idea how much context plays a role in language until you start trying to teach it to a computer. If you say "Time flies like an arrow", it's tricky just to identify what's the subject and what's the verb. Oh, sure, it's plain to you and me, but it could be parsed like this: 1. Time flies. It flies in the manner of an arrow. [The intended meaning] 2. There is a variety of fly called "time flies". They like an arrow (i.e., find it pleasing). 3. I want you to time some flies. I want you to time them the same way you would time an arrow. #2 and #3 are absurd interpretations, but the computer doesn't know this because it has no real understanding of any of these words, let alone why somebody would say this sentence in the first place. Could we get to the point where computers have intelligence? It's quite possible, but we've barely even started down that road. Experiments in giving computers intelligence go all the way back to the 1950s, and we've actually made extremely little progress since then. We get minor advances here and there, but the "big picture" of artificial intelligence hasn't changed in 50 years. - Kef Edited by furrykef on 08 September 2009 at 4:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5891 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 19 of 23 08 September 2009 at 5:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Interesting discussion. The issue of the exponentially accelerating pace of computer advancement is really not my bailiwick, so I can not really advance the conversation particularly. No doubt idioms present some additional challenges, but I stand by my statement. In fact, I am prepared to amplify it - reliable computer translation including idiomatic expressions well within my lifetime. Just for a timeline reference, I am 46 years old, eat crap instead of healthy stuff and drive like a maniac with only intermittent regard for my own safety at the best of times - not sure what timeline an actuary would provide (especially if she/he had ever driven with me), but I am not expecting this development to be decades away by any means.
Spanky (ready to root for Skynet at the appropriate time) Edited by Spanky on 08 September 2009 at 6:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5891 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 20 of 23 08 September 2009 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Not directly on point, but just for fun relating to predictions (by folks who at the time presumably had some smarts in the area) about computer development:
'I think there is a world market for maybe five computers' Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943 ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- 'While a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 10000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers of the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.' Popular mechanics, 1949 ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- 'I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year' Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957 ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- 'But what... is it good for?' Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems division of IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968 ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- 'There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in the home' Ken Olson, Present, Chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977 ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- '640K should be enough for anybody' Bill Gates, 1981 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6407 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 21 of 23 08 September 2009 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
If we haven't had any serious advancement in artificial intelligence in 50 years, why would we have decent machine translation within the lifetime of anybody here? Sure, computers get faster all the time, and they have ever increasing memory capacities, but speed and memory limitations are not the problem. It's figuring out how to program the stuff in the first place.
This quote was taken out of context. He meant a computer in the home -- as a part of the home, a computer that runs the home. Other quotes from that time show that he was indeed aware of the potential for computers to be useful, commonplace tools (although I doubt he, or anybody else, imagined they'd become what they are today).
Nope, he's never said this. The only places this quote pops up are lists like this one; nobody can pin down the source of the quote. I don't know about the rest of the quotes, except I think Thomas Watson did say the "maybe five computers" quote. But, of course, a computer meant an almost completely different thing than what we have today, and he was probably thinking of within the next couple of years, not decades, in which case he was right. - Kef 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6207 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 22 of 23 08 September 2009 at 10:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I saw an early computer in the London Science Museum. It would have taken up most of a living room and maybe spilled into the corridor. I don't think the extent to which these things can be reduced in size was comprehended. That was probably the kind of thing Watson meant.
I remember the first digital calculator I saw was a desk one about the size of a paperback novel, in the mid-1970s. Within a few years, pocket ones became widespread. On language, I don't know. I am amazed at the things machine translation can do and I don't under-estimate technology. I think the more stereotyped language is, the better machines can handle it. OK, idioms will throw them (and foreign language learners, not just machines, can struggle with them) but a lot of language is stereotypical. Some words are more common than others, some words will go to a fixed place in the sentence, you have set phrases. Cryptologists have made breakthroughs because of the stereotyped nature of underlying language, even coded. Which is why codes often throw in nonsense words or patterns to make the code more difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6407 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 23 of 23 09 September 2009 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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But the fact remains that if a computer does not fully understand the meaning of a phrase such as "time flies like an arrow" -- and it cannot unless it has an encyclopedic knowledge of the world -- then it has to guess. Sometimes it will guess right. Sometimes it will guess wrong. And the more complex the sentence, the more likely a wrong guess will be.
I just put this phrase into three online translators: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." I translated it from English to Spanish in Babelfish, Google Translate, and the Reverso translator that this thread is about. All three of them translated "Time flies like an arrow" correctly. However, all of them mistranslated "fruit flies like a banana". All three translated "like" as a conjunction or preposition instead of a verb. Reverso made the additional mistake of translating "flies" in the second sentence as a verb, rather than considering "fruit flies" to refer to a type of fly. Of course, the joke itself doesn't translate into Spanish, but that's aside from the point. :) - Kef Edited by furrykef on 09 September 2009 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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