Using Computing Might, Google Improves Translation Tool - NYTimes.com
... Automated translation systems are far from perfect, and even Google's will not put human translators out of a job anytime soon. Experts say it is exceedingly difficult for a computer to break a sentence into parts, then translate and reassemble them. But Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people. "If you need a rough-and-ready translation, it's the place to go," said Philip Resnik, a machine translation expert and associate professor of linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Like its rivals in the field, most notably Microsoft and I.B.M., Google has fed its translation engine with transcripts of United Nations proceedings, which are translated by humans into six languages, and those of the European Parliament, which are translated into 23. This raw material is used to train systems for the most common languages. <...> While many translation systems like Google's use up to a billion words of text to create a model of a language, Google went much bigger: a few hundred billion English words. "The models become better and better the more text you process," Mr. Och said. <...> ... Google released a search-by-voice system that was as good as those that took other companies years to build. ...
... Automated translation systems are far from perfect, and even Google's will not put human translators out of a job anytime soon. Experts say it is exceedingly difficult for a computer to break a sentence into parts, then translate and reassemble them.
But Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people. "If you need a rough-and-ready translation, it's the place to go," said Philip Resnik, a machine translation expert and associate professor of linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Like its rivals in the field, most notably Microsoft and I.B.M., Google has fed its translation engine with transcripts of United Nations proceedings, which are translated by humans into six languages, and those of the European Parliament, which are translated into 23. This raw material is used to train systems for the most common languages.
<...>
While many translation systems like Google's use up to a billion words of text to create a model of a language, Google went much bigger: a few hundred billion English words. "The models become better and better the more text you process," Mr. Och said.
... Google released a search-by-voice system that was as good as those that took other companies years to build. ...
Most of my research involves the communications of corporations and government institutions. Very little involves consumer communications i.e advertising. It is all so-called B2B = business to business, and as such is informational rather than emotional. Google translate does a very good job of translating Finnish and Swedish in these areas. In fact, if anything comes up rather oddly in translation, it is almost always because the original was badly written (a common problem ;-))
So for me, google translate is not simply a way of quickly comparing communications in different languages (I continue, after all these years, to 'think' in English), but also a guide to better communication. You can't be me, I'm taken
I've used it to do some Chinese --> English translations (including a couple of diaries on ET), and while sometimes it gives you funny stuff, not infrequently it provides an interpretation that makes better sense than my own first effort. It's astonishing, and humbling. I'm starting to believe that a Turing test-passing automatic translator, like a black U.S. president, will happen not just within my lifetime, but in the unexpectedly near future.
Sven Triloqvist: I continue, after all these years, to 'think' in English
slightly off topic, but i wonder how many polyglots out there feel that they (1) "think in a language", and (2) if so, are they able to think in a non-native language, and (3) how is it for those who grew up speaking two languages from birth and throughout childhood? for myself, i used to think i didn't think "in a language", but simply translated (or converted) metalinguistic thoughts into language for the purposes of communication. but recently i've started to feel that actually i do "think in English", or if not, my way of perceiving/interpreting/experiencing reality, and thinking through problems, is heavily heavily structured, enriched and limited by the English language -- maybe "mediated in English" is the right way to put it. i find it very hard to pin down, so i was wondering what others' take on this is.
also, for those who are visual artists, or whose work involves intense or primarily non-linguistic cognition, do you find that you "switch" into a non-linguistic mode when doing that work? my brother is a painter, and he has no problem listening to Podcasts and radio talk shows while he paints. but i find it impossible to write or even do software programming while listening to talk radio/podcasts -- in English. but the worse i am in a language, then the easier it is for me to concentrate on my work while listening to talk in that language. The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.
Swedish is my native tongue, the rest I learned in school. (English is mandatory, a third language is a commonly used option and a fourth is a possibility.) A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
slightly off topic, but i wonder how many polyglots out there feel that they (1) "think in a language", and (2) if so, are they able to think in a non-native language, and (3) how is it for those who grew up speaking two languages from birth and throughout childhood?
great question.
my native tongue is english, and i definitely feel my thinking is 'mediated' by that, in ways i find hard to language!
i do find myself counting in italian sometimes though, and very oddly i find myself typing an 'a' before or after a word, fr'example: 'you like-a pasta?', giving a sopranos effect to the text, lol.
being half and half, it's difficult to discern what comes through culture, dna, or language, in fact i wonder if one can separate them analytically...
as for going into states of conscious highly resistant to verbalisation, if that's what you mean, yes, sometimes trying to language something too fast devalues experience.
it's like one is narrative, -the experience- and the description is commentary.
some situations demand an artistic response (whatever that is, easy on the PNs), and that is always more interesting, nuanced and complex than a mere observation or witnessing.
sort of like the difference between text and html. the former is more linear and less expressive, but short and sweet. a non-mediated response might be a movement, or a spontaneous clap of the hands, or a desire to rechannel that inspiration into something original.
i can't blog and listen to a talk podcast at the sametime, but i can blog and semi-watch TV talk in the background, although at the beginning it was really brainstretching, especially while reading dkos with fox on in the background, multitasking media studies, or political schiziphrenia, hard to tell lol!
then there's another strange quirk too, that is if i have to listen critically to a piece of recorded music i'm working on, out-takes of a song, i hear mistakes and places for improvement, energy imbalances, and other 'burrs' much better if i'm using the front of my mind for reading, it can be about something totally different.
there is also the forest for the trees syndrome when one listens to a piece over and over, after a while i need to change vibes, either by working on a different song, (preferably with a different 'feel'), or by going and doing something totally different, going for a walk perhaps.
same while cooking and listening to out-takes, often i hear it more detachedly when concentrating on something else, and experiencing the art peripherally.
maybe it's similar to the peculiar relaxing of the vision one has to do to see certain patterns, or 'where's waldo?' type of phenomena.
i noticed it first while staring at whole walls of islamic tilework, on the sides of moroccan mosques.
mind-altering art, it's the most!
opens up the chinks and lets new energy in.
then we play with descriptions, the ephemeral to art's eternality.
i think you might like the work of ellen langor, an eminent psychologist i heard interviewed on the last electric politics podcast. i loved it so much i listened to it three times, and went explored her web presence a bit. one page mentioned, maybe it was FB, that her favourite thing was wry wit, and the podcast was a treasure trove of it. it was called 'empirical monism' and here's the link, if you have time http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2010/02/empirical_monism.html
once you leave monolingualism behind, and especially if you do translation work, i think one of the drollest things is how there are 'cracks' between languages, and some are better for languaging some states of mind. i have a german friend studying medicine in italian, and it drives her crazy,lol!!!
very fertile territory, these 'cracks' whither and whence much meaning can disappear, hide, peek out in, morph or emerge.
there, that should be vague enough! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I first got the sense that I speak German well when I realised that I use it alongside Hungarian when thinking. A decade later, I realised the same regarding English, which is funny: it came all from reading and USENET posting, while for lack of practice, my spoken English was and is awful (and even my written one ridden with grammatical errors). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Te Taka Keegan, a university lecturer in New Zealand, is betting that Google can help him preserve the Maori language of his ancestors. Mr. Keegan uses a tool called the Google Translator Toolkit to upload Maori translations of English texts to Google. Others can then use those translations in their work, increasing the quantity and quality of Maori translations that are available, and creating incentives for children of Maori descent to learn the language. "With this tool, we can actually uplift our language," Mr. Keegan said. "For us, it is about saving our language from extinction. We are trying to help our culture survive." The Google Translator Toolkit may be good for the culture of the Maori people, an indigenous minority group in New Zealand. It's also good for Google. Data from the toolkit helps Google beef up its machine translation system, which I cover in an article in Tuesday's Times. Google's machine translation system feeds on data, including the data that Mr. Keegan and others feed into the toolkit. If enough people use the service, Google will eventually have enough data to add Maori to the list of languages that Google can translate automatically. Google Translate, the company's translation tool, now speaks 52 languages, more than any of the major machine translation systems in use. In a sign of Google's ambitions, the company recently released the toolkit in 345 languages, from Abkhazian to Zulu. ...
Te Taka Keegan, a university lecturer in New Zealand, is betting that Google can help him preserve the Maori language of his ancestors.
Mr. Keegan uses a tool called the Google Translator Toolkit to upload Maori translations of English texts to Google. Others can then use those translations in their work, increasing the quantity and quality of Maori translations that are available, and creating incentives for children of Maori descent to learn the language.
"With this tool, we can actually uplift our language," Mr. Keegan said. "For us, it is about saving our language from extinction. We are trying to help our culture survive."
The Google Translator Toolkit may be good for the culture of the Maori people, an indigenous minority group in New Zealand. It's also good for Google.
Data from the toolkit helps Google beef up its machine translation system, which I cover in an article in Tuesday's Times.
Google's machine translation system feeds on data, including the data that Mr. Keegan and others feed into the toolkit. If enough people use the service, Google will eventually have enough data to add Maori to the list of languages that Google can translate automatically. Google Translate, the company's translation tool, now speaks 52 languages, more than any of the major machine translation systems in use. In a sign of Google's ambitions, the company recently released the toolkit in 345 languages, from Abkhazian to Zulu. ...
Some scholars estimate that at least half of the world's languages may disappear within this lifetime. Paul Christians and Jeff DeKock decided they needed to do something about that, so they started Open Hand Studios. The organization works to preserve cultural heritage. Both Paul and Jeff studied anthropology in graduate school. And Jeff says he and Paul were frustrated with the ways that anthropologists were engaging with indigenous communities.Below is a slideshow of photos from the different regions Open Hands works in. To read the captions which accompany each photo, click on the captions button on the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow. ...
