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The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

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Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#11

Post by cabalamat »

For an example of the state of automatic translation c.2010 I give you this:

This is question, engish is faulty therefore the right excused is requested. Thank google to translate to help. SORRY!!!!!

At often, the goat-time install a error is vomit. To how many times like the wind, a pole, and the dragon? Install 2,3 repeat, spank, vomit blows

14:14:01.869 - INFO [edu.internet2.middleware.shibboleth.common.config.profile.JSPErrorHandlerBeanDefinitionParser:45] - Parsing configuration for JSP error handler.

Not precise the vomit but with aspect similar, is vomited concealed in fold of goat-time lumber? goat-time see like the wind, pole, and dragon? This insult to father's stones? JSP error handler with wind, pole, dragon with intercourse to goat-time? Or chance lack of skill with a goat-time?

Please apologize for your stupidity. There are a many thank you

(from https://lists.internet2.edu/sympa/arc/shibboleth-users/2010-... )

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#12

Post by pmontra »

It must work offline. One of the reasons is that tourists often don't buy a data plan (imagine a tour of Europe with a different country every couple of days) and wifi is not where you might need machine translation most, on the road.

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#13

Post by Piskvorrr »

personlurking wrote: post #3

The benefits to this kind of thing are being able to be very specific and go deeper into the subject matter with one's second or third languages. Plus I might argue that smaller languages won't need to die (if everyone can get along and do business in their own tongue). The drawback is that perhaps people who learn languages in the near future will seem like those who study Latin ever since it became a "dead" languag…

Note the qualification of "small-er" languages: you are implying "languages which are still large enough that a translational layer is economically feasible. Small languages (let me pull a number out of thin air and assume <20 million speakers) would still be doomed. Guess what: that means English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Polish for Europe, everyone else kindly GTFO, we don't have resources for implementing your languages.

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#14

Post by tomp »

radarsat1 wrote: post #9

I'm currently living in a country where I don't speak the language. I can't believe how incredible translation tools are. Even though I don't understand when people speak to me, I can write and read emails, and accomplish things that would be incredibly more difficult without this ability (e.g. talking to my insurance agent). And when I say I can read and write emails, I mean it can do so in about 1.5x longer than a…

What is the other language, and how similar is it to English (or other languages you know)? (Beofre you answer, my predicted answer is "very similar".)

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#15

Post by nsns »

The idea that one can translate words without understanding what is being said, seems rather similar to an idea that one can infer the meaning of words from their constituent letters. Meaning not only works simultaneously on so many technically inaccessible levels (context, expectations, allusions, previous experiences, etc.), anything mildly interesting (not to mention proper literature), is based by definition on a deviation from established meanings.

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#16

Post by [deleted] »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #8

"...in ten years time." To quote XKCD's translation (sic!), "we haven't finished inventing it yet, but when we do, it'll be awesome." https://xkcd.com/678/ This is the same tired old story that keeps on making rounds for the sixth decade now - "machine translation kind of sucks now, but it will be solved within the next decade!!!!!!!!1!" This is still very much a current paper - note the publication date: http://www.…

[deleted]

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#18

Post by tallanvor »

The problem is that we still haven't been able to write a system to accurately recognize the words that are being spoken. Differences in diction, dialects, and accents make it difficult to accomplish. Just look at what Microsoft, Google, and Apple are doing - as good as they are, they're nowhere close to where they need to be.

Even once we solve the voice capture issue, I suspect that we'd still run into many areas where the computer would have problems determining the proper context necessary to accurately translate the text. Whatever system is performing the translation would have to maintain a history of the conversation in order to have any hope of understanding context, and at a gathering where you could have multiple conversations occurring at the same time, the process gets even harder.

I think the only part of the author's belief that we're close to achieving is being able to have the computer use the original speaker's voice. Siri and Cortana could already sound more human, but people are currently more comfortable having them sound robotic. I'm sure that will change in time, however.

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#19

Post by xiaoma »

>You could host a dinner party with eight people at the table speaking eight different languages, and the voice in your ear will always be whispering the one language you want to hear.

And at this hypothetical dinner party, what would the earpieces whisper in English (or most other languages) when the Japanese guests said いただきます?

Some words just don't have a translation in other languages.

https://www.google.com/search?q=いただきます&tbm=isch

Re: The Language Barrier Is About to Fall

#20

Post by kazinator »

I suspect real-time machine translation is within reach if the speakers are trained to use a restricted subset of their native language. Moreover, I suspect that this approach could be both realistic and useful.

This restricted subset situation is de facto already the case; existing tools don't handle regional dialects and colloquialisms. I just tried "嘘じゃねいぞ" (uso ja nei zo!) in Google Translate and it came up with rubbish because it doesn't know that "nei" is a variant of "nai".

The kinds of restrictions I'm thinking of are deeper: avoidance of the full variety in sentence structure, and excessive complexity, like compounded of relative clauses. Not to mention language-dependent tricks like double meanings depending on puns, and generally all figures of speech that do not translate.

A restricted subset of your native language is something which you already understand, and learning to speak it is easier than a whole different language.

People doing business abroad would just study that for a few weeks as part of the workflow.

The dialect could become richer and thus less restricted as time goes on, making it easier to use. It could be customizable as well, to a particular speaker's idiosyncrasies. If a given speaker often uses some figure of speech out of habit, it could just be defined for that speaker, with a hand-crafted translation to various languages.

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