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Google gave their MT a "brain": Google Neural Machine Translation
Thread poster: Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 12:13
English to French
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Nailed it on the head! Mar 6, 2017

LegalTransform wrote:

What will happen when A.I. becomes self aware and starts demanding .30 a word?


Quite right, that's one of the main concerns. If the system gets powerful enough, GT could become a service provider of some sort. But judging by the preceding comments, that seems a bit far off

My bests


 
Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Real test Mar 6, 2017

A test (names are changed to avoid confidenciality issues):

(Source)
This is a claim by Don Pizarro (“Pizarro”) and thirteen other claimants for a Norwich Pharmacal order against Don Rocco trading as Rocco (“Rocco”).

(GT)
Esta es una reclamación de Don Pizarro ("Pizarro") y otros trece reclamantes por una orden de Norwich Pharmacal contra Don Rocco que operaba como Rocco ("Rocco").

(Human)
La presente es una demanda interpuesta po
... See more
A test (names are changed to avoid confidenciality issues):

(Source)
This is a claim by Don Pizarro (“Pizarro”) and thirteen other claimants for a Norwich Pharmacal order against Don Rocco trading as Rocco (“Rocco”).

(GT)
Esta es una reclamación de Don Pizarro ("Pizarro") y otros trece reclamantes por una orden de Norwich Pharmacal contra Don Rocco que operaba como Rocco ("Rocco").

(Human)
La presente es una demanda interpuesta por Don Pizarro («Pizarro») y por otros trece demandantes que solicitan que se dicte una orden Norwich Pharmacal, contra Don Rocco que opera con el nombre comercial de Rocco («Rocco»).

The style GT uses is poor, yet intelligible. It completely ignores the contexts (claim = reclamación, whereas the proper terms would be “demanda”, and claimant = reclamante, wheseas the proper term would be “demandante”). Nothing that cannot be [post]edited in no time.

Now, watch this:

(Source)
Machine translation is no match for human translation.

(GT)
La traducción automática no es ninguna coincidencia para la traducción humana.

(Human)
La traducción automática no está a la altura de la traducción humana.

Here, GT missed the point completely. I would never accept for [post]editing a text that contains this sort for mistranslations.

Where is the improvement?!
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Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:13
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
some Dutch into English, straight from the Googlemonster (via GT API in Déjà Vu X3): Mar 6, 2017

De raad van commissarissen is verantwoordelijk voor het uitoefenen van toezicht op het rapportageproces van de vennootschap.
=
The supervisory board is responsible for supervising the reporting process of the company.


Verantwoordelijkheden van het bestuur en de raad van commissarissen.
=
Responsibilities of the Board and the Supervisory Board.


Wij bevestigen aan de raad van commissarissen dat wij de relevante ethische voorschriften
... See more
De raad van commissarissen is verantwoordelijk voor het uitoefenen van toezicht op het rapportageproces van de vennootschap.
=
The supervisory board is responsible for supervising the reporting process of the company.


Verantwoordelijkheden van het bestuur en de raad van commissarissen.
=
Responsibilities of the Board and the Supervisory Board.


Wij bevestigen aan de raad van commissarissen dat wij de relevante ethische voorschriften over onafhankelijkheid hebben nageleefd.
=
We confirm to the Supervisory Board that we have complied with relevant ethical requirements on independence.


• het toetsen van relevante gegevens en van de interne en externe documentatie, op basis van deelwaarnemingen, om de betrouwbaarheid van de Geselecteerde Informatie vast te stellen.
=
• assessing relevant data and internal and external documentation, on a test basis, to determine the reliability of the Selected Information.

*****************************

Not bad at all.
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Kevin Fulton
Kevin Fulton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:13
German to English
Definite improvement in German to English Mar 6, 2017

In the past I've found GT useful for medical terminology searches, but otherwise weak overall. After reading today's postings, I ran a fairly technical sentence through and was surprised at the results which were significantly better better than the last time I tested the system (about 6 months ago). I used a different sentence this time (from a current project), so the results of my test aren't especially valid, but rather subjective.

 
Inga Petkelyte
Inga Petkelyte  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 12:13
Lithuanian to Portuguese
+ ...
Yesterday Mar 6, 2017

Yesterday I was lazy to translate myself, so did this with GT:
entered in EN:
company registration, reorganization, liquidation

and got in FR:
Enregistrement, réorganisation, liquidation

Therefore, the supposed improvement noticed here today was a big surprise to me.

And when it comes to EN into PT, then it's an absolute absurd (still).


 
Bernhard Sulzer
Bernhard Sulzer  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:13
English to German
+ ...
A tool is a tool is a ... Mar 7, 2017

Michael Joseph Wdowiak Beijer wrote:

Tom in London wrote:


Since that, do you feel an improvement in Google MT while you've been using it?


I used it briefly today. If anything it was even more inaccurate that before. It chooses words I would never choose, and mangles syntax so that phrases which qualify a noun get shifted to the wrong place. A dog's breakfast.


I suspect it differs greatly per language pair/direction. Dutch into English has been spitting out some fantastic stuff these past few days. Obviously far from perfect, but very useful nonetheless, both as a dictionary and as a memory jog, serving up pretty darned fluent snippets of human-like English.


One can indeed use Google Translate as you say. More for certain applications than for others. But to me the point is that the translations that are delivered cannot be trusted. As others have demonstrated here, it can always be a hit or a miss. The more complex a text is, the more likely it is that the human mind has to rework those results extensively.
No matter what kind of engine, "neural" (it's not alive) or "neurotic," is used, the engines work with information that has been translated before. So, yes, we get results but they can't be perfect and hardly ever are because the new texts are different (mostly anyway), in their structure, in their meaning of words, and the engine just cannot tackle them like a human. The MT engine doesn't work like a human brain. Until a machine is actually translating like a human, i.e. thinking like a human, we don't have to fear the competition at all. So, yes, we can use Google Translate as long as we can pick out what we know to be right based on our knowledge, but that is it, it's another tool that some use and others totally reject. In any case, the goal of the human translator is to deliver a text that has been produced and checked by a human translator. Whatever tool he/she uses, the human factor (our brain) must come into play or what you get is not what most clients are still looking for: an accurate conveyance of a text in another language.

[Edited at 2017-03-07 04:28 GMT]


 
Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 12:13
English to French
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
I'm curious Mar 7, 2017

I'm curious,

Did anyone try to compare (in a language pair where GT gets better results) if the results where the same between submitting from the paid API (in a CAT) and from the free Google Translate web page?

My bests to all!


 
Siegfried Armbruster
Siegfried Armbruster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:13
English to German
+ ...
In memoriam
AI is a hype, produced to get money from risc capital companies or public institutions Mar 7, 2017

Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
Until a machine is actually translating like a human, i.e. thinking like a human, we don't have to fear the competition at all. So, yes, we can use Google Translate as long as we can pick out what we know to be right based on our knowledge, but that is it, it's another tool that some use and others totally reject. In any case, the goal of the human translator is to deliver a text that has been produced and checked by a human translator. Whatever tool he/she uses, the human factor (our brain) must come into play or what you get is not what most clients are still looking for: an accurate conveyance of a text in another language.


Fully agree with Bernhard.
Statistical or Neuronal MT systems are not intelligent at all, they know nothing about the texts, the context, the applicable regulations etc. In my opinion, all they provide is a more or less useful feature extending our CAT tools.

In my opinion there is too much focus on the "mechanical" aspects of computerized pseudo-translations, whereas a lot more could be gained by concentrating on the actual processes (preparation of the source documents, when and where to use which software tool to support the translator, etc.)

I can translate up to 8k words per day in high quality in my language pair and specialty field and I am prepared to enter into a competition with any MT system that is out there.



[Edited at 2017-03-07 07:25 GMT]


 
Oksana Weiss
Oksana Weiss  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:13
Member (2011)
German to English
+ ...
What about non-English language pairs? Mar 7, 2017

OK, Google, what if we move from English to non-English language pairs? The article in Wikipedia says:
"Google Translate previously first translated the source language into English and then translated the English into the target language rather than translating directly from one language to another."
Let's see whether it has succeeded in doing direct translation, say, in German-Russian pair. The article from today's Spiegel:
DE: Kurz nach dem fulminanten Börsendebüt stürzt
... See more
OK, Google, what if we move from English to non-English language pairs? The article in Wikipedia says:
"Google Translate previously first translated the source language into English and then translated the English into the target language rather than translating directly from one language to another."
Let's see whether it has succeeded in doing direct translation, say, in German-Russian pair. The article from today's Spiegel:
DE: Kurz nach dem fulminanten Börsendebüt stürzt die Aktie von Snap um zwölf Prozent ab - und fällt am Ende sogar unter den Ausgabepreis.
RU: Вскоре после блестящего IPO акций застёжкой на двенадцать процентов аварий - и падает в конце даже ниже цена вопроса.
DE: Frank Plasberg versuchte den großen sozialpolitischen Rundumschlag - und scheiterte. Es war eine seltsam konfuse "Hart aber fair"-Sendung mit der Erkenntnis, dass 75 Minuten verdammt lang sein können.
RU: Франк plasberg попробовал большое общественно-политическое подметания удар - и потерпели неудачу. Это было странно путать "жесткий, но справедливый" шоу с осознанием того, что проклятые 75 минут может быть долгим.
Nein, danke. Weiter machen!:)
In English: thanks but no thanks. We can certainly do better without it.
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Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:13
Member (2008)
Italian to English
So near, but yet so far Mar 7, 2017

Approximation will not do, in a translation. It must be exact.

So here's a example of how Google Translate hopelessly tries to guess the correct translation, getting it partly right and partly 100% wrong (making it useless for any serious purpose):

ITALIAN

L'evoluzione del progetto non parte dall'idea convenzionale di doccia, piuttosto da una visione delle funzioni e della gestualità ad essa legate molto più ampia e aperta a raccogliere e mutuare forme e
... See more
Approximation will not do, in a translation. It must be exact.

So here's a example of how Google Translate hopelessly tries to guess the correct translation, getting it partly right and partly 100% wrong (making it useless for any serious purpose):

ITALIAN

L'evoluzione del progetto non parte dall'idea convenzionale di doccia, piuttosto da una visione delle funzioni e della gestualità ad essa legate molto più ampia e aperta a raccogliere e mutuare forme e stili da altri contesti, come dal mondo dell'acustica.

ENGLISH

The evolution of the project will not start from the idea of a conventional shower, rather by a vision of the functions and gestures to it much wider tied and open to collect and borrow shapes and styles from other contexts, such as the acoustic world.

WHAT IT SHOULD BE (first translation before polishing) AND WHAT GOOGLE TRANSLATE CAN NEVER DO

Instead of beginning from the conventional idea of the shower, the evolution of the project begins from seeing the functions and gestures associated with showering in a way that goes much wider and is far more open to collecting and borrowing shapes and styles from other contexts, such as the world of sound.

[Edited at 2017-03-07 14:41 GMT]
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Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 13:13
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
A funny situation a while ago. Mar 7, 2017

Not so long ago, I worked with a weird PM. Well-intended, polite, but weird. She kept sending me back chunks of my translation checked/edited in "free style" evidently using Google Translate or similar machine translation software. Never mind how many times I told her not to do this, she kept on doing it returning bits of my text machine translated. It got me thinking she had some kind of deal/contract with one of those MT companies being asked, required or paid by them to play like this and exp... See more
Not so long ago, I worked with a weird PM. Well-intended, polite, but weird. She kept sending me back chunks of my translation checked/edited in "free style" evidently using Google Translate or similar machine translation software. Never mind how many times I told her not to do this, she kept on doing it returning bits of my text machine translated. It got me thinking she had some kind of deal/contract with one of those MT companies being asked, required or paid by them to play like this and experiment between human and machine translation (and she was doing it in the middle of a serious and large project - technical manual!)

After a month or so, they contact me again (another PM) wanting me to do a final check/read on the compiled manual. They offered a reasonable fee for this work, so I took it on. So I go along the manual recognizing my own translation and now and then I bump into random parts that are google translated (yet again!) - those were actually new bits of the original/source text that did not appear in my translation, but instead of leaving them in English, they just machine translated it - these people were playing with MT toy in the middle of a super serious project dealing with serious safety requirements etc. Now comes the funny bit. I go along reading these technical features, safety measures etc, and somewhere in the middle of a manual, out of nowhere, two machine translated passages pop up one of which says, in the middle of a sentence:

"open up your penis"

Wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. How to report it to a client saying a phrase "open up your penis" appears in the middle of an expensive technical manual they were about to send to their client?

[Edited at 2017-03-07 15:30 GMT]
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Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:13
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
:-) Mar 7, 2017

Lingua 5B wrote:

Not so long ago, I worked with a weird PM. Well-intended, polite, but weird. She kept sending me back chunks of my translation checked/edited in "free style" evidently using Google Translate or similar machine translation software. Never mind how many times I told her not to do this, she kept on doing it returning bits of my text machine translated. It got me thinking she had some kind of deal/contract with one of those MT companies being asked, required or paid by them to play like this and experiment between human and machine translation (and she was doing it in the middle of a serious and large project - technical manual!)

After a month or so, they contact me again (another PM) wanting me to do a final check/read on the compiled manual. They offered a reasonable fee for this work, so I took it on. So I go along the manual recognizing my own translation and now and then I bump into random parts that are google translated (yet again!) - those were actually new bits of the original/source text that did not appear in my translation, but instead of leaving them in English, they just machine translated it - these people were playing with MT toy in the middle of a super serious project dealing with serious safety requirements etc. Now comes the funny bit. I go along reading these technical features, safety measures etc, and somewhere in the middle of a manual, out of nowhere, two machine translated passages pop up one of which says, in the middle of a sentence:

"open up your penis"

Wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. How to report it to a client saying a phrase "open up your penis" appears in the middle of an expensive technical manual they were about to send to their client?

[Edited at 2017-03-07 15:30 GMT]


On a related, humorous, note, since I started using dictation a few years ago, I really need to watch out things like "Melville, out of here!" or "Juniper, put that down!" don't end up in my final drafts! (Melville and Juniper are my dog and baby daughter, respectively)

Michael


 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 13:13
Spanish to English
+ ...
Safety requirements? Mar 7, 2017

Doesn't sound very safe.

But I'd be interested to know what they actually meant. Difficult to imagine.


 
Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 13:13
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Right on lol Mar 7, 2017

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

Doesn't sound very safe.

But I'd be interested to know what they actually meant. Difficult to imagine.


Not very safe and not related in any way, shape or form to the topic this passage was talking about (a big machine assembly). Is that the "brain" Google gave their MT?

[Edited at 2017-03-07 15:58 GMT]


 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 13:13
Spanish to English
+ ...
Remember "2001 ... Mar 7, 2017

... a Space Odyssey? The on-board computer got a mind of its own, and took over. This is Google's MT with a mind, simply having a laugh with some machinery. Open up the tool - Make sure it is firmly in place and secure - Ensure it is connected to all functions - Check fluids etc.

 
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Google gave their MT a "brain": Google Neural Machine Translation






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