It's a fascinating concept

Notoriously hard to translate one language to another - how to carry across cultural information linguistically encoded, idiom and so on (and remember idioms change - or do you listen to the latest hip sounds from the trap scene and exclaim "that's a stone groove, Daddio!" - please, please tell me you don't...not to mention regional variation (English has some, I'd argue German (for example) has more).

I guess you can take digitised books and digitised literary translations of books (so mass translations done by human experts), train machine learning algorithms on that stuff and so on. But...wow...the complexity would be staggering.

I'd love to know more about how they do it; and I'd be really wary of using it in a critical situation (health, business etc). As long as the other person was not going to take offence at things it might come out with it might be quite good for tourists - more mass market than specialist but that's probably where the money is anyway for something like that.

Posted By: Old Man on May 24th 2019 at 20:09:30

Message Thread

Just read Google are trialling an ai service called Translatotron. (NCFC) - Men without hats, May 24, 19:04:26
- I do and no. (n/m) (NCFC) - APB, May 25, 09:16:29
- Wouldn't need too many words to translate me (NCFC) - LittleMouseWithClogs, May 24, 21:02:47
- I think I've found the output of a prototype actually (NCFC) - Old Man, May 24, 20:29:41
  - That is brillers. (n/m) (NCFC) - Men without hats, May 24, 21:04:03
    - Number 11 is exactly right (n/m) (NCFC) - watfordcanary, May 24, 21:52:23
- It's a fascinating concept (NCFC) - Old Man, May 24, 20:09:30
- 80% useful. 20% recipe for disaster (n/m) (NCFC) - Steve in Holland, May 24, 19:19:30
  - I would be a bit concerned about how accurate the translation was (NCFC) - Men without hats, May 24, 19:43:37
    - In time it will be near flawless (n/m) (NCFC) - CWC, May 24, 19:54:10
      - no, it'll never be flawless (NCFC) - Worzel Scrimmage, May 24, 20:24:33
        
        I did say "near" :) (NCFC) - CWC, May 24, 21:28:07
        
        you could be right, but that's what they were saying about translation software years ago (NCFC) - Worzel Scrimmage, May 24, 21:33:06
        
        Oh I hear you (NCFC) - CWC, May 24, 21:44:54
        
        that's also true, we're on the cusp of a new industrial revolution (NCFC) - Worzel Scrimmage, May 24, 21:50:57
        
        Yup (NCFC) - CWC, May 24, 21:59:33
        
        yes, I think so too. Surely engineering in particular will be an AI field (NCFC) - Worzel Scrimmage, May 24, 22:05:22
        
        As you say dialects - Geordie to Fen Gibbon! (NCFC) - Men without hats, May 24, 20:59:25
      - Probably will. I'm just 'old school' in that I try to do maths in my head (NCFC) - Men without hats, May 24, 20:14:06
- Oh ma vache mon ami! Quand arrive le babelfish? (n/m) (NCFC) - Worthing Yellow, May 24, 19:10:53
  - Nope, no idea. (n/m) (NCFC) - Men without hats, May 24, 21:04:33

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.