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Machine Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5174 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 1 of 25 16 October 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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What are your thoughts on the future of machine translations, I thought the were woefully inadequate until I saw this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw .
Maybe it is truley is Orwellian, Kubric "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 25 16 October 2010 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm actually quite impressed with those machine translations - they may be bad, but it is amazing that a computerbased system can give a recognizable translation of a text at all. If you had asked me five or ten years ago what the future of machine translation would then I would not have guessed that statistical methods (as those employed by Google) could ever be useful, and translation systems based on language analysis and dictionaries would have been extremely hard (and expensive) to program manually for each language pair.
But with the risk of being unduly pessimisitic I do think that there is a limit to how far you can go without combining statistics with other kinds of information. For instance Google Translate has a very annoying tendency to substitute language- and country names with other language and country names. There should definitely be some a system that identify proper names and lists somewhere that indicate which of those have a common translation in any target language. This is actually just the beginning of a project that brings in some knowledge about the world in the translations, but it is probably the easiest - or only easy - part of that project. Besides there are too many errors in simple syntax, with disappearing negations and wrongly interpreted pronouns as the most obvious examples. So even though it may be too much to expect Google to implement a complete rulebased grammar in its translation algorithms, some minimal set of grammatical rules might weed out many of the most idiotic translation errors. In other words it should technical possible to make better translations, and I'm quite confident that we will see further progress in this field. Edited by Iversen on 16 October 2010 at 9:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5174 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 3 of 25 16 October 2010 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've noticed myself that they are getting better and better and in short order. How soon before they don't need us anymore?
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| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 25 16 October 2010 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Already now. At least in Denmark the number of students at the language institutes at our universities is thundering downwards - everybody clearly assumes that a combination of rappers' English and Google Translate will be enough
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| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5771 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 5 of 25 16 October 2010 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Everybody realizes this was an April Fools Joke, right?
..Right?! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 4992 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 25 17 October 2010 at 12:26am | IP Logged | ||
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What impresses me about google translate is it gives you some insight into pages written in languages that would otherwise be a total mystery. It might not be accurate but its more informative than nothing.
I spent some time being thrilled by viewing wikipedia using it. Some of the translations are funny. This was a translation for the Persian Lucius Apuleius article.
Total nonsense but you can still get some idea of what its saying. Edited by fireflies on 17 October 2010 at 12:27am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5229 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 7 of 25 17 October 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I doubt we will ever get a time where machines can truly replace human translators,
especially when it comes to literature. I'd love to see a computer figure out how to translate a novel from English to Japanese and decide between using keigo and more casual language during dialogues; or male or female speech; when can pronouns be dropped; which pronouns should be used for what characters in the book to give the right impression; are the connotations of certain words appropriate for the tone... There are far too many variables to take into account and it would simply be impossible to program to give a natural sounding translation, whatever the language. By the time a program had been developed to that level of sophistication, the language would have evolved too much making any such program more or less redundant. I think the translators of the world need not worry too much about the march of the machines, unless super intelligent cyborgs are developed but then we'll likely have other things to worry about. ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 5003 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 8 of 25 17 October 2010 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||
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My experience is that with European languages, translating into English at least, machine translators do an impressive job. This has been true for the last 10 years or so, and Google Translate has built upon this by getting some idiomatic things right. That said, even the best computer translations are much worse than the speech produced by even the most uneducated and unintelligent native English speaker. The complex sentences that they sometimes get right are notable because of the many rather simple everyday utterances that they get wrong, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibleness.
And that's European Languages. Translating Chinese, Japanese or Korean into English results in translations that are at best semi comprehensible. English --> German --> English My experience is that dealing with European languages translated into English machine translation, at least an impressive work. This was added in the last 10 years or so true, and Google Translate on them by build some idiomatic things right. This means that even the best computer translations are much worse than the speech of even the ignorant and stupid native English speakers produced. The complex sentences that sometimes quite remarkable everyday because of the many rather simple expressions that something is wrong, sometimes to the point obscurities. And that is European. Translate Chinese, Japanese or Korean into English translations, which are at best half understood. English --> Korean --> English My experience with the European languages, at least in English translation, machine translation is an impressive work. This has been true in the past 10 years or so Google translation of some of the things that are idiomatic to have built two. It's also the best computer translation of flesh and mind are not by far the most ethically made by native English speakers are more than a speech said. Complex sentences correctly, they are sometimes misunderstood because of the many simple everyday words, incomprehensibleness can focus on the point sometimes. And Europe is the language. Translation Chinese, Japanese, or Korean is the best English translation of the semi-understand results. EDIT: editing (and re-translating) errors in my own text. You can't really expect that to be translated correctly. Edited by Nudimmud on 17 October 2010 at 2:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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