Automatic Translation Without Dictionaries 115
New submitter physicsphairy writes "Tomas Mikolov and others at Google have developed a simple means of translating between languages using a large corpus of sample texts. Rather than being defined by humans, words are characterized based on their relation to other words. For example, in any language, a word like 'cat' will have a particular relationship to words like 'small,' 'furry,' 'pet,' etc. The set of relationships of words in a language can be described as a vector space, and words from one language can be translated into words in another language by identifying the mapping between their two vector spaces. The technique works even for very dissimilar languages, and is presently being used to refine and identify mistakes in existing translation dictionaries."
My hovercraft is full of eels! (Score:5, Funny)
My nipples explode with delight!
Re:how would (Score:5, Funny)
how would 'tight pussy" be translated?
"Tight pussy" would be translated automatically, and without dictionaries. This is answered right in the headline.
Re:Sounds good, but we need a robust plug (Score:5, Funny)
What's it got in its pocketses?
Re: make that the cat wise! (Score:2, Funny)
Yes exactly. For sayings google translate works not so good now. But perhaps with this technique it will be to plums in the future.
Dolphinese Will Now Be Understood (Score:4, Funny)
It should also allow us to detect future ape rebellions before they happen.
Re:how would (Score:5, Funny)
"tight pussy" be translated?
"The cat has drunk a saucer of wine."
Re:And what's the algorithm complexity? (Score:5, Funny)
Statistical translation is always going to have issues like that, but it can perhaps reach the 'good enough' point to hold a conversation with.
I can easily see it getting confused by formal vs informal use. If it goes on association, eventually it's going to get 'lawyer' and 'extortionist' confused.
Re:And what's the algorithm complexity? (Score:4, Funny)
I too get lawyer and extortionist confused.