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Google Translate Is About To Get a Lot Better, Thanks To Its Machine Learning Push (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the new-heights dept.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is offering a big new update that should affect anyone who's ever used Google's translation services. From a report on CNBC: The new version will be rolling out in 2017 via Google Cloud, Pichai said. "We have improved our translation ability more in one single year than all our improvements over the last 10 years combined," Pichai told investors in a quarterly call, after parent company Alphabet reported mixed results.

46 comments

  1. I've seen this in action by Hussman32 · · Score: 2

    I received a long letter in Japanese, ran it through Google translate, and sent it to my Japanese colleague. He thanked me for pointing it out, it saved him an hour of work; he only needed to make minor corrections.

    --
    "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
    1. Re:I've seen this in action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see you had meant to vote for Tlump.

    2. Re:I've seen this in action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      As long as you work on your own impulse control... you know, before you act like the oldest joke in the world might possibly hurt someone's feelings for any reason other than that they need to learn to stop being so sensitive about things that don't matter.

    3. Re:I've seen this in action by religionofpeas · · Score: 0

      Since when is a language a race ?

    4. Re: I've seen this in action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're the one embarrassing yourself if you think that old joke is racist. Are you even Asian or are you one of those pricks who get offended on behalf of others. I ask, because my Asian friends and I usually end up in tears laughing when we try to learn each other's pronunciation...

    5. Re:I've seen this in action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is that racist? I am Japanese and I laughed at it.

      Please don't try to assume to role of race guardian, especially for races that aren't your own and for which you have no voice to speak from.

    6. Re:I've seen this in action by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google thanks you for willingly sharing your correspondence with them. And their new machine learning algorithms finally allow them to actually deal with all this information. It's not hard to see why Google would provide such a service pretty much "for free".

  2. deferred maintenance by Moblaster · · Score: 3, Funny

    i.e. "we haven't updated the software for a decade, but we are rolling out a patch soon"

  3. What else would they say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "We just made Google Translate worse, enjoy!"

    1. Re:What else would they say? by Rei · · Score: 1

      If it's anything like their "improvements" to Google Maps of recent years....

      --
      "Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
    2. Re: What else would they say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you talking about? The updates for google maps have been amazing. It's incredible that I can go for an hour long drive and the eta for maps can be almost spot on.

      Also, I tend to use it a lot because it seems to be spot on for crashes too

    3. Re: What else would they say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google translate 2016...
          French: "Bonjour!"
          English: "Hello!"

      Google translate 2017...
          French: "Bonjour!"
          English: "The nearest Starbucks is teo blocks away. Would you like an Uber to get there?"

      Google translate 2018...
          French: "Bonjour"
          We're sorry, Google translate service was discontinued last month.

    4. Re: What else would they say? by Rei · · Score: 1

      I'm talking about the interface, not real-time road data. The major change to the interface that they rolled out several years back was terrible, and remains so. They made it slow, spread out buttons that do the same thing, removed lots of useful buttons and features, added a number of buttons that the vast majority of people will never want to use but will click on thinking that they're something else, made the geotagged photos system practically useless, and ((insert about 50 more complaints here)). Also, 1998 called, they want their terrain maps back. Seriously, how is it 2017 and their terrain maps still look like garbage?

      Here, let's pull up a link for what terrain looks like on our little local mom-and-pop maps site (Ja.is). Now let's get the same spot to compare in google.... Oh, hey, I was going to grab it for you, but it looks like Google Maps doesn't even want to open on my latest version of Chrome! On my work computer, it opens fine, but if I zoom out too far it freezes.

      POS.

      --
      "Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
  4. But what does it give on a round-trip translation? by sconeu · · Score: 1

    Especially for the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind"? Or do we get "Invisible Idiot"

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  5. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by aicrules · · Score: 1

    Which language did you use to get that? I tried a few. Spanish worked well. Arabic made it a little more flowery. Japanese came close to what you said "Invisible, without mind".

  6. Translation by ledow · · Score: 1

    My girlfriend is Italian.

    I'm Cockney (a particular London accent that's fast and loose with silly things like consonants in words - sorted becomes "saw-id").

    Google Translate - in any of its forms - is just assuredly hilarious. If they've made ten years progress it might just about not completely comical any more, that's about it.

    The only decent feature is the Translate app which can replace words in a video image in real-time.

    Scan it over a menu and you can get a vague idea of what food it lists, but good luck relying on it for any kind of accuracy. Normally as you hold the image as still as you can, you get words like lobster changing to words like furniture and all kinds of nonsense.

    And even when you TYPE IN a phrase beyond "Where are the toilets?", the translation is as useless as Facebook's translations on its posts.

    Machine learning has a LONG way to go before it can get to properly translate anything. Like understanding me when I say "Cancel Route" in my car, which basically has no fucking idea what I'm saying despite it having a very limited vocabulary at that point, speaking clearly, enunciating as best I can, repeating endlessly and being alone in a soundproof box with a mic stuck above my head (which is crystal-clear on phone calls).

    1. Re:Translation by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      You seem to be quite knowledgeable about the change that will get rolled out in 2017. Where did you test it ?

    2. Re:Translation by ledow · · Score: 1

      Read the post.

      IF THEY IMPROVED TEN TIMES OVER, it would still be crap.

      I just asked it to translate a boring paragraph on the back of a bank statement to Italian and its translation included a type of fruitcake.

    3. Re:Translation by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      IF THEY IMPROVED TEN TIMES OVER, it would still be crap.

      I read it, but I figured nobody would be stupid enough to say that without actually testing it.

    4. Re:Translation by msk · · Score: 1

      If you're not familiar with this, perhaps you'll have a laugh, particularly the reference to Dick Van Dyke.

    5. Re:Translation by JDHannan · · Score: 1

      You're really complaining a lot more about the image-word-detection and voice-to-text translation than you are about actual language translation

    6. Re:Translation by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      a particular London accent that's fast and loose with silly things like consonants in words

      Lol if sorted vs saw-id was as bad as it gets we'd have no problem.

      It's what you do to the rest of the language that is an assault on the homeland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0fNaH5fBXo

    7. Re:Translation by SirSlud · · Score: 1

      "IF THEY IMPROVED TEN TIMES OVER, it would still be crap."

      These are the grounded, quantifiable, bold claims that I come to /. to read. That such and such has a LONG way to go until this or that.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    8. Re:Translation by zhiwenchong · · Score: 2

      I think you are complaining about voice recognition, not translation. Translation is mapping one language to another.

    9. Re:Translation by idji · · Score: 1

      no, he means translation of text he WRITES to bad vendors.

  7. A few issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems it was optimized to translate whole sentences as opposed to short phrases, so some expressions or phrases in Japanese come out as complete gibberish or seemingly random phrases that have nothing to do with the input. And sometimes, the phrase highlighting feature that allows you to associate parts of the sentence between input and output just highlights the entire sentence, making it harder to determine where a word/phrase from the translation comes from.

  8. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by Guybrush_T · · Score: 1

    Actually, typing "Out-of-sight, out-of-mind" (with dashes) gave a better Japanese translation, but the translation back was still : "Invisible, do not worry" which is clearly not that great :-)

  9. FINALLY! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    I can't wait to be able to properly swear at Alibaba merchants! ;)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  10. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by laie_techie · · Score: 1

    Especially for the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind"? Or do we get "Invisible Idiot"

    For Portuguese: "Out of sight, out of mind" => "fora da vista, longe da mente" (out of sight, far from mind) => "Out of sight, out of mind"

  11. Give it another ten years... by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    Then we'll have a valid need to say "my hovercraft is full of eels".

  12. assel rat by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I'm Cockney (a particular London accent that's fast and loose with silly things like consonants in words - sorted becomes "saw-id"). ...
    > when I say "Cancel Route" in my car, which basically has no fucking idea what I'm saying

    So you said "assel rat" and it said "what the hell did you just say?!" ? ;)

  13. Long-Running Mistranslations by Feneric · · Score: 1

    Maybe they'll finally fix "ferret": https://www.reddit.com/r/Esper...

  14. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by sconeu · · Score: 1

    It's an old apocryphal story about a English/Russian translation machine.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  15. If Only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They could get to translate properly. Proper sentence structure be damned has been Google Translates apparent philosophy. If you cant translate something and show a native speaker without them being utterly confused, then it is worth little more then a language to language reference book.

    However, annectdotally, the image processing and translation is one (possible the only) feature that is useful.

  16. Not until... by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Until it translates "Donald Trump" into "Mother fucking shithead" it will be broken.

  17. chinese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Currently Chinese to English translations sucks for anything longer than two words

  18. Improved all the way to -1 by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

    Me: Chrome please translate japanese to english: http://www.elecom.co.jp/suppor...?

    Chrome: Japanese is hard.

  19. Glad they aren't going to "Give up" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google Translate sings "Let it Go": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bVAoVlFYf0

  20. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Especially for the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind"? Or do we get "Invisible Idiot"

    For Portuguese: "Out of sight, out of mind" => "fora da vista, longe da mente" (out of sight, far from mind) => "Out of sight, out of mind"

    In pt that would be awkward and unnatural. "Out of sight, out of mind" -> "O que os olhos não vêem, o coração não sente"

    Translate's got a long way to go.

  21. Google Translate is pure garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since Google Translate is pretty much the WORST translator currently available, any small knob twist can be used as a claim of improvement.

    The stupid tool can't do even basic translation without doing a literal translation of each individual words.

  22. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

    Are you talking about the one that translated "the body is weak but the spirit is strong" into Russian and back to English and got "the meat is rotten but the vodka is strong"?

    --
    Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
  23. Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, becouse the google is actually hard translated that one.
    Try - what is Out of sight is out of mind - and look fot the results