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

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.

Comments

I've seen this in action

[Hussman32]

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.

Re:I've seen this in action

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

deferred maintenance

[Moblaster]

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

But what does it give on a round-trip translation?

[sconeu]

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

Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati

[aicrules]

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".

Translation

[ledow]

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).

Re:Translation

[religionofpeas]

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

Re:Translation

[ledow]

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.

Re:Translation

[religionofpeas]

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.

Re:Translation

[msk]

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

Re:Translation

[JDHannan]

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

Re:Translation

[thegarbz]

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

Re:Translation

[SirSlud]

"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.

Re:Translation

[zhiwenchong]

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

Re:Translation

[idji]

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

Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati

[Guybrush_T]

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 :-)

FINALLY!

[Gravis Zero]

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

Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati

[laie_techie]

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"

Give it another ten years...

[SeaFox]

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

assel rat

[raymorris]

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?!" ? ;)

Long-Running Mistranslations

[Feneric]

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

Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati

[sconeu]

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

Re:What else would they say?

[Rei]

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

Not until...

[AndyKron]

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

Improved all the way to -1

[CrashNBrn]

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

Chrome: Japanese is hard.

Re: What else would they say?

[Rei]

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.

Re:But what does it give on a round-trip translati

[bzipitidoo]

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"?