Coming Soon, The Google Translator

compuglot writes "Google gave journalists a glimpse of its next generation machine translation system at a May 19th Google Factory Tour. "Google Blogoscoped" offers an excellent overview of the presentation. The system has been trained using the United Nations Documents as a corpus. This corpus is some 20 billion words worth of content. It uses existing source and target language translations (done by human translators at the U.N.) to find patterns it then uses to build rules for translating between those languages. Apparently it was successful where the current version had failed in translating certain phrases. If anyone were capable of making a serious go of MT, that would have to be Google."

Bork bork bork!

[AtariAmarok]

Here is the result as interpreted by the Swedish Chef:

"Guugle-a gefe-a a Gleempse-a ooff its mecheene-a Uebersetzoongsystems zee fullooeeng prudoocshun et zee fectury ruoote-a ooff zee A Mey 19 tu juoorneleests. Guugle-a. "Guugle-a Bluguscuped" ooffffers un ixcellent ooferfeeoo ooff zee representeshun. Zee system ves treeened veet zee neshun ducooments es kurpoos. Thees kurpoos is sumetheeng 20 beelliun vurd felooe-a ooff cuntents. It uses zee ixeesting terget lungooege-a trunsleshuns (tekes plece-a feea hoomun trunsleturs et zee U.N.) Semples feend, vheech use-a it zeen tu istebleesh gooeedelines fur trunsleteeng betveee thuse-a lungooeges. Epperent it ves sooccessffool, vhere-a zee present ferseeun hed feeeled, iff it trunsleted certeeen cleeches. Iff iferyune-a ooff furmeeng a sereeuoos vere-a cepeble-a, ooff zee M.Ue-a., thuse-a vuoold gu tu hefe-a hefeeng tu Guugle-a."

Looking forward to a www.borkle.com which returns all its results in such a format.

Anyone care to make a bet?

[Weaselmancer]

That Microsoft will announce a new revolutionary language translation service sometime in the next two weeks or so?

Re:fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great and all, but I won't be impressed until it translates the gibberish that comes from the Iranian gas station attendant everytime I stop for gas.

For now, I just nod my head in ignorance, and count my change.

Piffle

[ear1grey]

If anyone were capable of making a serious go of MT, that would have to be Google.

An interesting story, but please, for the love of all that's balanced and objective; tell me again how that smudge on your nose really is chocolate.

Altavista Babelfish

[yotto]

When questioned on the matter, Altavista's Babelfish translator gave this quote:

Google does not have anything on my amazing abilities of the translation!

Yeah for foreign spam!

[Anonymous Coward]

At last I can translate all those non-English spam emails I get! There'll be no more missed opportunities to buy chinese viagra, woohoo.

Pre-emptive strike

[eno2001]

Since it's become "hip" to bash Google these days and support either MSN's search technology or Yahoo, I'm making a pre-emptive strike for the IT fashionistas:

"Duh!!! The best machine translator in the world already exists and there can be no improving upon it! Babblefish (thank you Altavista) has been doing this for well nigh a decade. All you Johnny-come-latelys are probably going to rave on with fanboy adoration of Google (the company that can do no wrong)!!! To top it all off, you lot apparently know nothing about Microsoft's language transtlation project which is slated to be deployed as part of Longhorny in 2010. Online language translation from Google will fail because Microsoft will have it built into the OS itself. Why send your document online for translation when the OS itself will not only translate it, but it will correct the grammar, punctuation and generate a WMA file in one of ten thousand gorgeously rendered synthetic voices. Google has lost. Google as been trolled. Google will have a nice day".

We now return you to your regularly scheduled pos[tt]en.

Old news...

[jasonmicron]

There is already a tranzilator [gizoogle.com]

Re:Unsupported assertions

[tobybuk]

Look pal, you said something about Google that could be taken a negative. Here on Slashdot that is only slightly better that saying something good about Windows. But thank your lucky fucking stars you didn't decide to disparage the immortal being that is Linux. That's worse than flushing the original Koran down the pan.

Re:oh no!

[fuzzybunny]

While an improved Babelfish may improve our mutual comprehension, please pause for a moment to consider all the linguistic hilarity we'll forever lose.

Yeah, like me going to work for Bull [bull.com] in 1997, and searching for "comment dit-on, le, fuck, le chose sur lequel on tappe, thingy qui connecte a l'ordinateur, ah yeah, le clavier". French Bull dude: "ah, le keyboard."

Hilarity indeed.

Lovely translation source...

[isa-kuruption]

So when you go to translate.google.com and translate something, the result will be legal-eze in the resulting languages.

Spanish: "Que pasa?"
English translation: "With regards to the current situation, how is the day progressing?"

Re:if anyone...

[LiquidCoooled]

They won't have any money left to fritter on useless projects after SCO beats them ;)

DVD's subtitle tracks

[Jotham]

DVD subtitle tracks would be another good addition to help pick up slang too (most have an english track along with a couple others depending on the region)... all time-synced and easy to match up...

(I'm guessing that it'd fall under fair use and google wouldn't have to struggle to get the movie studios approval, (even though such tech would benefit the studios too))

Re:Only works for translating speeches

[Dystopian Rebel]

And if the peeps chin-wagging at Kofi Annan's gig don't interpret 733T 5P3AK, you're in the saddle!*

*Up the river without a paddle.

Starting Wars !

[justanyone]

In 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' (the 'trilogy' of books, not the recent movie), it's mentioned that the babelfish has effectively started many, many wars. The reasons seem to be that any being can be rude to any other being without a serious set of translations that explain exactly what the rude terms mean and how they should be regarded.

I'm highly concerned for this warmongering that Google has undertaken.

Reference Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/belgiu m.shtml [bbc.co.uk]

Picture this: I write a blog entry with either bad punctuation or erroneous content. Under the old system (pre-Goolge translation), I would receive several flames about my idiocy. With Google translations:

* People around the world will be confused and angered about my punctuation;
* Vastly larger numbers of people will complain about my erroneous content;
* Other people will step up to my defense and a massive flame war will ensue;
* Idiots eveywhere (who speak other languages) will echo my idiocy by believing the erroneous content I posted;
* The signal to noise ratio of the net will rise markedly;
* I will still be unsure of whether to count on my fingers starting with my thumb or forefinger depending on which European country I'm in.

I believe this pro-war, anti-peace, conflict-ridden idea of making everyone THINK they understand each other is ripe for critism. God made everyone else speak funny, I think it should stay that way! Only right thinking people speak my language anyway, and everyone else should just shut up and sit down!

(WARNING: above post contains carcinogenic levels of sarcasm, fasciousness, satire, irony, and adjectives. Please unplug brainstem and wipe with a clean, damp cloth before continuing.)

Re:fascinating

[fizban]

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

"STFU, Dave. LOL!"

Re:fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

You go all the way to Iran to get gasoline? Who are you, George W Bush?

yeah, but can it translate this?

[nullset]

Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput. be careful! If you translate this you may end up dead.....

Re:if anyone...

[rbarreira]

I believe your thoughts are upside down...

Re:Integrate with GMAIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you subscribed to Amazon.de mailing list if you don't speak German?!?!? How are you gonna read those German books?!

Re:Lovely translation source...

[ShadyG]

No, it actually translates "que pasa" into "We hereby condemn these actions taken by the Israeli government."

Re:fascinating

[should_be_linear]

but the Bible uses many outdated or non-standard phrases and sentence structures, as does most legal text I've ever seen. I'm not a linguist or a statistician, but from my uneducated viewpoint it sounds like problems might arise in the texts that are available for training the system. Anyone know how they're planning to overcome this?

Harry Potter is the answer. It is several "normal language" books and is translated to all major languages. Also, program would finally figure out how to translate words like "Quidditch".

Don't forget...

[ballpoint]

John, the cunning linguist.